Yannick Grannec - The Goddess of Small Victories

Adele’s words were coming out in a rush. Anna remembered what the clog-shod nurse had told her. It was time to slow things down. She hoped their escapade hadn’t blown the last points of life in the elderly lady.

“Gladys did a good job.”

Anna tugged by reflex on a strand of her hair.

“ ‘I like your hair!’ is the female equivalent to the male ‘You’re so strong!’ Even a big girl with many diplomas falls for it. I may be a reactionary, my little tootsie, but my theorem is eternal all the same. You would do much better to think along practical lines. What are you going to wear for Thanksgiving? I see you in something red.”

The Dadaist loves life, because he can throw it away every day; for him death is a Dadaist affair. The Dadaist looks forward to the day, fully aware that a flowerpot may fall on his head.

— Richard Huelsenbeck, En avant Dada

“This is not a session. Just think of it as a conversation.”

I clutched my purse to my stomach. Kurt avoided looking at me. We were not in the habit of opening ourselves up to a stranger, and in this case it wasn’t even really a stranger. Initially, I’d thought the consultation a good idea. In this odd office, though, sitting across from this even more bizarre man, I felt strongly inclined to take to my heels.

Kurt was still shaky after a recent hospitalization. The crisis might have had a familiar ring to it except that, since his release, Kurt had balked at eating anything I prepared. We had reached a dead end. He didn’t trust me. We lived like two strangers mired in a deadly silence, heavy with resentment and misunderstanding.

Albert, sensing our marital difficulties, had tactfully recommended a psychoanalyst: Charles R. Hulbeck, one of his many protégés. Kurt had followed his old friend’s advice, as he often did. Hulbeck, whose real name was Richard Huelsenbeck, was a first-wave émigré from Germany who had received his visa on the recommendation of the ever-helpful Herr Einstein. Albert had described him as an odd duck: a crazy artist but a competent psychiatrist. Fantasy and science seemed incompatible to me: in general, people like to hold forth on what they don’t fully understand.

The walls of his study were all but invisible behind a collection of artworks. Abstract collages and large flat expanses of black paint vied for space with a grimacing assemblage of African figurines, Japanese theater masks, and carnival disguises. My eyes were drawn to a small watercolor in a more traditional style. I shuddered when I looked at it more closely: a delicate angel whose legs were engulfed in flames.

“Do you like William Blake, Adele?”

I shrugged uncertainly. What could this crackpot do for us? A simple conversation with him could keep a couple from going under?

“Kurt, I feel that you’re tense.”

My husband winced. He didn’t expect to be addressed so cavalierly.

“Would you enlighten me as to your method, Dr. Hulbeck? To what school do you belong? I’ve researched the different therapeutic courses.”

“I’m not a Freudian. And I’m only marginally Jungian. I would place myself outside of orthodox practice. If I had to name an influence, I would say that I am close to Binswanger, a neuropsychiatrist who distanced himself from classical Viennese psychoanalysis by creating Daseinsanalyse .” 34

“What does that mean, ‘ Daseinsanalyse ’?”

“I’m not here to give you a lecture.”

My husband turned back to inspecting the walls. Knowing him as I did, I was sure that he would study Hulbeck’s references in close detail. His medical diplomas and navy surgeon’s insignia, framed as they were by the terrifying collection, hardly seemed to carry much weight. I wondered if the masks were travel mementos or trophies of psychiatric warfare, shrunken heads. He wouldn’t get mine.

“Take off your coat, Kurt. You’ll feel more comfortable.”

My husband made no motion. He clung to his overcoat as a young bride clings to her nightshirt. I had taken the appointed seat on the couch, where I sat stiff as a board, my back unsupported. The bench’s cold leather and chrome legs hardly seemed propitious for pouring out one’s heart. Kurt, to avoid touching me, had settled onto a low chair covered in the long-haired fur of some animal. He sat engulfed in a giant female sexual organ. The psychiatrist made the circuit of his office three times before sitting down with a small drum on his lap. 35Hulbeck looked somewhat like a Great Dane, appealing but dangerous. I almost expected him to urinate on the leg of his chair. Instead, he favored us with a thundering serenade on the drum.

“Could one of you articulate why you are here?”

Kurt darted a questioning glance at me. I invited him to go first.

“My wife is very hot tempered.”

Charles forestalled my rebuttal with a roll of the drum.

“Don’t answer. Let him talk.”

“Adele can’t control herself. She yells over nothing at all. She disturbs me at my work.”

“Why are you angry with your husband, Adele?”

“Do you want an exhaustive list? He’s egotistical, childish, and paranoid. Everything revolves around his little health problems.”

“Hasn’t your husband always had a fragile constitution?”

“I can’t stand it any longer. He takes it too far. He’s using his frailty as an excuse!”

“Can you be more precise?”

This oddball was starting to prey on my nerves. He wanted to winkle words out of us? By God, I’d give him a plateful!

“Christ on a crutch! I’m fragile too! His genius, his career, his illnesses, his fears! No room for my fears!”

Kurt flinched. He couldn’t stand coarse language. I found it gave relief. People don’t all have the same way of expressing their discontent. He had never understood this. I yelled, I insulted. I got vulgar. Sadly vulgar. My melancholy might be less stylish than his, but it was no less real. His suffering couldn’t compete with mine, and his depressions had given him a good excuse not to become involved with others and never to take sides. He had constructed a magnificent Black Legend to protect himself, but the walls protecting him had become those of a prison.

“Why do you call your husband ‘paranoid’? It’s a clinical term with a precise definition.”

“He thinks he’s being followed. According to him, the FBI is bugging us. Perfect pretext not to talk at all!”

“How did you arrive at this conclusion, Kurt?”

“By simple deduction. I am a friend of Einstein and Oppenheimer. Both are being investigated by McCarthy’s subcommittee. In addition, I’ve received several letters from Europe that have been censored.”

“Do you work on sensitive topics?”

“They’ll grab at any excuse. The fact that we once traveled on the Trans-Siberian railway is enough to brand us as pro-Russian. Their illogic makes everything logical.”

“When you say ‘they,’ who do you mean?”

Kurt stared at him, genuinely surprised at his question.

“The Secret Service. The government. Princeton is full of all kinds of spies.”

“Does news of the Korean War make you anxious?”

“It disappoints me. I had hoped to live in a sensible country where I could pursue my research in peace. What I find is people digging bomb shelters in their gardens against nuclear attack and stocking up on sugar packets! I am a very sane national in a paranoid nation.”

Hulbeck thought quietly for a moment, one hand suspended in air.

“Adele, do you reproach your husband for not paying enough attention to you?”

“It was never part of our bargain from the start. I was hired as the sick nurse.”