Doctor Klauder was excited to be the first of Sigmund's disciples to come to cure the ills and maladjustments of those in the American South. But he missed the reticence of the Europeans. Frustrating though it had been, their lack of self-centeredness had at least been a challenge.
"Doctor, do you think it's wrong for a woman to paint? Not that I would, or even needed to, but my best friend's granddaughter, she is using a bit of pot rouge, and I think lip rouge as well. I was thinking that perhaps I should draw a little skull on her door as a secret sort of come-down, don't you know."
Having to tease the personal information from a patient, indeed, he wished the client he was seeing this afternoon would go into a silent reverie, or indeed a coma…but she was much fonder of the soliloquy.
"Doctor, of all the Hamilton women, I think I may be the most ah self-effacing. India, my niece says I use the word too much because I read it in a novel, but don't you think I'm quite self-effacing? And I think I have a cleft chin. What do you think?"
Klauder had gone to hear the famous Harriet Tubman speak at Princeton University, and he'd been warned ahead of time that because of the elderly black's having been assaulted with the butt of a whip during her slave days, she occasionally passed out during one of her lectures.
"Uncle Peter, my coachman, is very upset because I had a gentleman caller last week and there was no chaperone. The fellow was selling some sort of shoe-brush, so it wasn't really naughty, but Uncle Peter is afraid I will become common like some of my friends who have taken in boarders to make money. I don't want to be common, Doctor—"
How dearly Klauder would have liked to have Miss Tubman as a client. The lady he had on his couch just now, Miss Sara Jane Hamilton, age seventy-two, would just not stop talking, and had no intentions of going into a brief nap.
"It's so different now that the nigras are freed, Doctor. The money we pay seems to spoil them. Give them too little they complain, if you give them too much, they seem to put on airs. Assassination is a terrible thing, but if it had to happen,I think Mister Lincoln should have been shot at the BEGINNIN' of the war, don't you?"
Perhaps a little Jungian meditation would be advisable. You shut your eyes, and your mouth, during meditation. But she seems to need no peace of mind, Mrs. Hamilton. Eighty cents a session is just not compensation—even two dollars would-
"I hate to get involved in other people's business, Doctor, but I think my friend down in Buckhead is involved with another friend's husband. Do you think I should leave a note in the other lady's mailbox, or just bring it up tactfully over one of my tea calls?"
Analysis was not always just a trial for the patient, Klauder reflected.
"I had so many beaux, Doctor. Male suitors, you know." Miss Hamilton said, looking up at the alienist from the couch. "But Papa didn't want me to just settle down with anyone, and I was terribly, terribly afraid also that if I accepted one proposal, the other boys might kill each other in a duel, or perhaps commit suicide, and we really couldn't have that."
The old lady giggled, immensely pleased with herself. "My beau Pennell Merriweather winked at me when I was a bridesmaid in his wedding to my dear friend Dolly. What can a girl do? I could tell there was pain in his eyes as well."
Klauder took a large sip of water. He had long dropped his little pad under the chair, and now was doing imaginary doodles of Otto Von Bismarck on his frock coat.
"Pennell wrote me love sonnets, I still remember one—
"In all the world I do not feign
My ad-mah-ra-shun for Miss Sarah Jane
She has no foibles, nor mis-rable faults
An' she's crackerjack at doin' a waltz!
Fo' a sugar-plum, she ain't so dumb, wish she'd drink
My Daddy's rum" But I apologize, Doctor, I can't remember the entire—"
"No no, dat ees more than enough for now!" Dr. Klauder hastily assured his patient.
"I was going to go to the conservatory in Marietta, to study spinet, but they said my fingers were too chubby for the keys, and Papa couldn't have made it without me staying within ten miles of him, don't you know."
Klauder looked out of the window. He was so grateful for the architecture of this office. The windows in Germany were so high, and without distraction he might commit homicide.
"I of course also retained my maidenhood to raise my niece and nephew, my dead brother's children, but even with this sense of duty, I could see the looks of agony and regret on the faces of many men who courted me…foolish boys."
In a sense, Klauder reflected, the American is less in search of answers, than just confirmation that all is well, that they are wonderful. You would think this would make the work easier, but I keep drinking more, alas.
"For a time, I thought of taking the veil, but do you know, nuns have to dress the same way every day?"
Perhaps I could keep just a very small amount of Madeira here at the office, not a great deal of course—
"I am so glad you encouraged me to tell you EVERYTHING about myself, Doctor Klauder, I don't have to hold anything back—"
"Vell, if you feel that you vish to keep some tings quiet, ah perhaps—"
"NO, I want you to hear it all!"
"Yes."
"Florence Lowther, she married one of my other nice boys, Ninian Elsing, who just had so much money. I heard Florence tell my best friend—well Florence is a dear friend too—that Ninny married Flo instead of me because I was heavy set, but I wasn't really. I was just Rubensque. Poor, jealous skinny Florence."
Miss Hamilton looked off dreamily, perhaps wishing she had a mirror. "Poor Florence, she had a rather homely daughter, called Florence as well, Fanny for short.
Fanny wouldn't court my nephew Charlie, he was so shy… I sent her an anonymous letter calling her Horse Face for that. But her mother- what a bitter, bitter person, though of course a good mother. I do love Florence Elsing."
"I must be honest, Doctor, it is true that I have gained some weight in my youth, but that is partially because when I was at the Tallulah Falls School I met this nice—though half Indian, I'm ashamed to say—stable groom, and we-we became close, and I got into a condition and had to go to Nice, in France, you know, to have a baby…"
It is no wonder she was concerned about being not chaperoned when in the office with me, Klauder thought. I keep hearing about this chaperoning but…
"And my Uncle Faribault, he'd been the victim of an awful accusation involving a ten year old boy, actually several ten year old boys, so Uncle Fair and I did our season in Europe together It was such fun, Uncle Fair knows so much about art, and all."
The old lady touched her face with a handkerchief, in which Klauder observed was a tiny decanter of brandy. She had apparently had this "cough" for a while. Shame the brandy didn't have more of a tranquilizing effect.
"They are so savage in the Old World, Doctor. No manners. Also, the other girls at the clinic really showed their situation much worse than I did, but Uncle Fair told me to keep a smile on my face and remember I was a Decatur Monson, and I've tried to."
Klauder was verging on confusion of Monson with Monsoon. Five dollars an hour would not…
"In Europe, I met so many nice men, but then we had to leave Nice because uncle met this shopkeeper's—he was an urchin, really—anyhow Uncle Fair went to Italy to look at some of the Carivaggio art and I came back home, without the baby of course."
Any child would perish with this sort of mother, Klauder mused. Could she stop talking long enough to give it the nipple?
" But after my condition, I began gaining weight…but it's always just made me more shapely, unlike so many scarecrow-ish women I've known."
Klauder looked at the suffering couch under the old lady's considerable weight, and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Grandfather had wanted him to be a surgeon, but Klauder had a weak stomach. The first time they'd dissected a rabbit in class, he'd dropped his lunch all over it, and that was the end of medical college.
"Actually, I weigh less now than I did then. It's a very personal thing, but my niece India says I should tell you everything. I think my bustle is drab now for a single lady, but I still show it a bit. What do you think, Doctor?"
Klauder perhaps should have not eaten the rice pudding for breakfast. He looked longingly at his spittoon.
"Papa always said I was light on my feet. He called me Pittypat, and now everyone does. Perhaps I should have tried to marry Ninian Elsing, but he was too shy to propose, even when I hinted coyly you know." The old lady paused and coughed into her handkerchief. "Boys sometimes never get the point."
Klauder had been sent Miss Hamilton because the old lady suffered from self-doubt and had low self-esteem…but if half of Germany had the confidence of this babbling shrew they never would have had to sign the Dreikaisersbund.
"Actually Ninian's brother and I became too close at one point, and I thought I was going to have a baby but I had scarlet fever and it went away. Boys are so silly, aren't they…but I liked Ninian, but perhaps Florence needed him more."
Klauder understood that Miss Hamilton had fainting spells, but this had not happened in the office as of yet. Could he frighten her somehow? Just for a moment or two. Her voice sounded like that of a wounded hummingbird.
" I would have hated to see poor Florence a spinster. Who else would have wanted her? Not to be spiteful of course she's my dearest friend. My niece India was a spinster for the longest time, and then she married my brother Henry about a year and a half ago, which was quite sudden. Henry is an awful man, and—"
The old lady caught her breath, and Klauder wondered whether she was going to be quiet for a moment. If he did not bill by the hour he would have quit the session now, if not committing seppuku.
"But India still has a key to my house and she's been meeting this awful man in my library every afternoon, and it's just terrible."
Vhat? Vhat did you say, Dummkopf—Miss Hamilton?"
"Oh, that Florence wouldn't have been a success as an old maid, she has these awful lines under her—"
"No, the other spinster. Vhat about—"
"There are many spinsters in Atlanta, Doctor Klauder. But few of them face life with the grace I possess—"
"No, your niece, Indiana—right? She spend time alone in a room vith a man?"
"No, India finally got married, thank God. No one thought she would, she doesn't have the rose in her cheeks of the Hamilton side of—"
"But about her dalliances vith the man who ees not her husband?"
"I shouldn't tell you this, it's rather private, you know." Miss Hamilton said, her double chin trembling as she looked over her shoulder from the couch.
"Mees Hamiltown, Ju haf told me about jur difficulties weeth your mudder in eh— giving up diaper to use outhouse training when ju were t'ree year—"
"No, when I was little I was trained—much too harshly—to use the facilities by my Mammy, Lulabelle. When Father found out Lulu actually hit me and made me smell my nappies, he threatened to sell her down the river, and I wish he had. But don't confuse my Mammy with my mother, of course. Mother wouldn't have stooped to even notice such degrading habits in childrearing as—"
"Jes- jour mudder—"
"No, my Mammy. You can't get my Mammy and my Mother confused, Dear God. My mother was Eunice Monson Hamilton, of the Decatur Monsons, as opposed to those awful Milledgeville Monsons, there's a story I could tell. My Mammy was the old darky who raised me.
Poor Mammy Lulu belle, she broke her neck falling…she first fell over a doll I left on the cellar stairs, and Mammy told Mama, and I got whupped, and so just for a joke my brother and I—he was so clever, I wouldn't have thought of it without him- tied a string across the stairs the next day, to see what Mammy would do, and she went right over, broke her neck, poor Mammy. I felt terrible, but Mother bought me a new dress for the funeral, and said I was the prettiest—"
"No, my point ees, ju haf told me all these secrets and confidences and now you balk at telling me dis interesting—revealing story about jour niece? Her behavior vith dis man could be ah—affecting your dream cycles."
Miss Hamilton's eyes widened then. She loved telling the doctor about her dreams.
"Oh, about India? Well, a lot has been going on. India's brother Ashley ran off with a trashy woman named Vavasour, and my grand nephew Wade and an awful gunslinger called Boyd something went to see the husband, Mister Vavasour, who tried to attack them, and Boyd shot this Vavasour right in the eye and killed him, and the magistrate said some very impertinent things to Wade…"
"But about India and her male visitor in your library. Were they—" pleaded the very, very bored Dr. Klauder.
"Yes, India and Captain Butler, who is also a sort of in-law of mine. He and India have been repairing to my library several times in the last few weeks, and I have been listening to the door…because there is a sort of couch in the library, more comfortable than this one and I'm afraid…"
"Jes? JES?" Klauder was almost frothing at his pad.
"Well, much of what they do is talk, Doctor. I learned that Captain Butler has a CHILD, an adult son who has a speech impediment, like you have."
"I do not haf a spich impediment. I spik perff-ect American." Klauder said heatedly. "Oy, I haf been mistaken for a native."
"I just meant he talks funny like you—"
"I spik like Wild Beel Heekok, I was trained—"
"Well, anyway, Captain Butler, who also had a child with my niece in law Scarlett, her name was Bonnie, the little girl—she died. Probably she also was traumatized by facilities training—"
"So there iss no luf-making in der liberry?" Dr. Klauder asked, in obvious disappointment.
"The first few times I just overheard—by mistake, as I dropped to tie my shoe—talking, as Captain Butler is interested in taking over the sawmills that his wife Scarlett had a recent financial loss on. He's been lending her money, and as she wants more cash, she's been giving him certificates of stock. "
Americans are so obsessed with money, Klauder thought dismally. For really, it is more important than lovemaking. If Stuttgart was not overwhelmed with psychoanalysts, Klauder would take the Queen Mary this afternoon.
"Captain Butler wants to buy up all the sawmills, and raze them, and start a bottling factory for the new soda beverage, Coca-Cola. I rather like Coca-Cola, Doctor. It gives me a sort of burst, you know."
A burst. She needs a burst. Gottinhimmel.
"My nephew Ashley brought me some morphia, he began taking it during the war for a leg wound, and I began feeling jittery, and Doctor Meade prescribed it, and then I was having Coca-Cola in the mornings to wake up, and a bit of morphia in the evenings to drowse off…
A shame he didn't have some morphia right here, Klauder thought. He could have patients sip it as they talked. They would feel cured almost instantly…or at least Klauder would feel somewhat cured, and he of course was beginning to think he needed analysis more than anyone in the wretched city of Atlanta.
"And then I wanted more sedative at noon, but Doctor Meade would only give me so much, and so my old darky Uncle Peter found a different doctor, who brought me more morphia, and a bit of laudanum….it's been quite peaceful, you know…"
"Vell you must not over-do it, Miss Hamilton."
"But with all the curious things that have been going on. Captain Butler is scheming, I think with India to take over Scarlett's sawmills, and you know, Scarlett sends me money each month, some of which I use for our sessions—"
Klauder suddenly felt more attentive.
"And then Captain Butler said the odd thing to India about being whipped, and I couldn't really—I had to take more morphia—"
"Vhat? Being whipped?" Klauder bent over and picked up his pad.
"It was very odd. Captain Butler told India that she reminded him of a governess he'd had as a boy, Miss Truncheon, who used to take down the captain's britches and WHIP him, and a little while later there was a din in the library like I just couldn't believe…"
After Miss Hamilton left, Klauder thought a bit about the sawmills that were owned by Scarlett Butler. He looked at his bankbook, and then hired a hack to visit Mrs. Butler personally.