فصل 22

CHAPTER 22

MAX WAS RIGHT. It was time to stop. Even so, Josef astonished himself when on Monday morning he walked into room 13 and declared himself fully recovered.

Nietzsche, sitting on his bed grooming his mustache, appeared even more astonished.

“Recovered?” he exclaimed, dropping his tortoiseshell mustache comb on the bed. “Can this be true? How is it possible? You seemed in such distress when we parted on Saturday. I worried about you. Had I been too hard? Too challenging? I wondered if you would discontinue our treatment project. I wondered many things, but never once did I expect to hear that you were fully recovered!” “Yes, Friedrich, I, too, am surprised. It happened suddenly—a direct result of our session yesterday.”

“Yesterday? But yesterday was Sunday. We had no session.”

“We had a session, Friedrich. Only you weren’t there! It’s a long story.”

“Tell me that story,” said Nietzsche, as he rose from the bed. “Tell me every detail! I want to learn about recovery.”

“Here, to our talking chairs,” said Breuer, taking his accustomed place.

“There’s so much to tell. . . ” he began, while next to him Nietzsche leaned forward eagerly, literally on the edge of his chair.

“Begin with Saturday afternoon,” Nietzsche said quickly, “after our walk in the Simmeringer Haide.”

“Yes, that wild walk in the wind! That walk was wonderful. And terrible! You’re right—when we returned to the fiacre, I was in great distress. I felt like an anvil: your words were hammer blows. Long afterward, they still reverberated, especially one phrase.” “Which was———”

“That the only way I could save my marriage was to give it up. One of your more confusing pronouncements: the more I thought about it, the dizzier I got!”

“Then I should have been more clear, Josef. I meant only to say that an ideal marriage relationship exists only when it is not necessary for each person’s survival.” Seeing no sign of enlightenment on Breuer’s face, Nietzsche added, “I meant only that, to fully relate to another, one must first relate to oneself. If we cannot embrace our own aloneness, we will simply use the other as a shield against isolation. Only when one can live like the eagle—with no audience whatsoever—can one turn to another in love; only then is one able to care about the enlargement of the other’s being. Ergo, if one is unable to give up a marriage, then the marriage is doomed.” “So, you mean, Friedrich, that the only way to save the marriage is to be able to give it up? That’s clearer.” Breuer thought for a moment. “That edict is wonderfully instructive for a bachelor, but it presents a monumental quandary for the married man. What use can I make of it? It’s like attempting to rebuild a ship at sea. For a long time on Saturday, I was staggered by the paradox of having to irretrievably give up my marriage in order to save it. Then, suddenly, I had an inspiration.” Nietzsche, his curiosity ignited, took off his spectacles and leaned perilously forward. Another inch or two, Breuer thought, and he’ll slip right off the chair. “How much do you know about hypnosis?” “Animal magnetism? Mesmerism? Very little,” Nietzsche replied. “I know that Mesmer himself was a scoundrel, but a short time ago I read that several well-known French doctors are now using mesmerism to treat many different medical ailments. And, of course, you employed it in your treatment of Bertha. I understand only that it’s a sleeplike state in which one becomes highly suggestible.” “More than that, Friedrich. It’s a state in which one is capable of experiencing intensely vivid hallucinatory phenomena. My inspiration was that in a hypnotic trance I could approximate the experience of giving up my marriage and yet, in real life, preserve it.” Breuer proceeded to tell Nietzsche everything that had happened to him. Almost everything! He started to describe his observation of Bertha and Dr. Durkin in the Bellevue garden, but suddenly decided to keep that secret. Instead, he described only the journey to the Bellevue Sanatorium and his impulsive departure.

Nietzsche listened, his head nodding faster and faster, his eyes bulging with concentration. When Breuer’s narrative ended, he sat silently, as though disappointed.

“Friedrich, are you at a loss for words? It’s the first time. I, too, am confused, but I do know I feel good today. Alive. Better than I have felt in years! I feel present—here with you, rather than pretending to be here, while secretly thinking of Bertha.” Nietzsche was still listening intensely, but said nothing.

Breuer continued, “Friedrich, I feel sadness, too. I hate to think our talks will end. You know more about me than anyone in the world, and I treasure the bond between us. And I have another feeling—shame! Despite my recovery, I am ashamed. I feel that, by using hypnosis, I’ve tricked you. I’ve taken a risk-free risk! You must be disappointed with me.” Nietzsche vigorously shook his head. “No. Not at all.”

“I know your standards,” Breuer protested. “You must feel I’ve fallen short! More than once I’ve heard you ask, ‘How much truth can you stand?’ I know that’s how you measure a person. I’m afraid my answer is, ‘Not very much!’ Even in my trance, I fell short. I imagined trying to follow you to Italy, to go as far as you, as far as you wished me to—but my courage flagged.” Continuing to shake his head, Nietzsche leaned forward, rested his hand on the arm of Breuer’s chair, and said, “No, Josef, you went far—farther than most.” “Perhaps as far as the farthest limits of my limited ability,” Breuer responded. “You always said I must find my own way and not search for the way or your way. Perhaps work, community, family are my way to a meaningful life. Still, I feel I’ve fallen short, that I’ve settled for comfort, that I cannot stare at the sun of truth as you do.” “And I, at times, wish I could find the shade.”

Nietzsche’s voice was sad and wistful. His deep sighs reminded Breuer that two patients were involved in their treatment contract, and that only one had been helped. Perhaps. Breuer thought, it’s not too late.

“Though I pronounce myself healed, Friedrich, I don’t want to stop meeting with you.”

Nietzsche shook his head slowly and determinedly. “No. It has run its course. It’s time.”

“It would be selfish to stop,” said Breuer. “I’ve taken so much and given you little in return. Yet I also know I’ve had little opportunity to give help—you’ve been too uncooperative even to have a migraine.” “The best gift would be to help me understand recovery.”

“I believe,” Breuer responded, “that the most powerful factor was my identification of the right enemy. Once I understood that I must wrestle with the real enemy—time, aging, death—then I came to realize that Mathilde is neither adversary nor rescuer, but simply a fellow traveler trudging through the cycle of life. Somehow that simple step released all my fettered love for her. Today, Friedrich, I love the idea of repeating my life eternally. Finally, I feel I can say, ‘Yes, I have chosen my life. And chosen well.’ ” “Yes, yes,” said Nietzsche, hurrying Breuer along. “I understand you’ve changed. But I want to know the mechanism—how it happened!”

“I can only say that in the last two years I was very frightened by my own aging or, as you put it, by ‘time’s appetite.’ I fought back—but blindly. I attacked my wife rather than the real enemy and finally, in desperation, sought rescue in the arms of one who had no rescue to give.” Breuer paused, scratching his head. “I don’t know what else to say except that, thanks to you, I know that the key to living well is first to will that which is necessary and then to love that which is willed.” Overcoming his agitation, Nietzsche was struck by Breuer’s words.

“Amor fati—love your fate. It’s eerie, Josef, how twin-minded we are! I had planned to make Amor fati my next, and final, lesson in your instruction. I was going to teach you to overcome despair by transforming ‘thus it was’ into ‘thus I willed it. ‘But you’ve anticipated me. You’ve grown strong, perhaps even ripe—but”—he paused, suddenly agitated, “this Bertha who invaded and possessed your mind, who gave you no peace—you haven’t told me how you banished her.” “It’s not important, Friedrich. It’s more important for me to stop grieving for the past and———”

“You said you wanted to give me something. Remember?” Nietzsche cried, his desperate tone alarming Breuer. “Then give me something concrete. Tell me how you cast her out! I want every detail!” Only two weeks ago, Breuer recalled, it was I who was pleading to Nietzsche for explicit steps to follow, and Nietzsche who was insisting on there being no the way, that each person has to find his own truth. Nietzsche’s suffering must be terrible indeed for him now to be denying his own teaching and hoping to find in my healing the precise path to his own. Such a request, Breuer resolved, must not be granted.

“I want nothing more, Friedrich,” he said, “than to give you something—but it must be a gift of real substance. There is urgency in your voice, but you conceal your true wishes. Trust me, this one time! Tell me exactly what you want. If it’s in my power to give, it shall be yours.” Jumping out of his chair, Nietzsche paced back and forth for a few minutes, then went to the window and stood, looking out, his back to Breuer.

“A deep man needs friends,” he began, as if speaking more to himself than to Breuer. “All else failing, he still has his gods. But I have neither friends nor gods. I, like you, have lusts, and no greater lust than for the perfect friendship, a friendship inter pares—among equals. What intoxicating words, inter pares, words containing so much comfort and hope for one such as me, who has always been alone, who has always sought but never met one who belonged precisely to him.

“Sometimes I have unburdened myself in letters, to my sister, to friends. But when I meet others face to face I am ashamed and turn away.”

“Just as you turn away from me now?” Breuer interrupted.

“Yes.” And Nietzsche fell silent.

“Do you have something to unburden now, Friedrich?”

Nietzsche, still gazing out the window, shook his head. “On the rare occasions when I have been overcome with loneliness and given vent to public outbursts of misery, I have loathed myself an hour later and grown strange to myself, as if I’d fallen from my own company.

“Nor have I ever allowed others to unburden themselves to me—I was unwilling to incur the debt of reciprocation. I avoided all this—until the day, of course”—he turned to face Breuer—“that I shook your hand and agreed to our strange contract. You are the first person with whom I have ever stayed the course. And even with you, at first, I anticipated betrayal.” “And then?”

“In the beginning,” Nietzsche replied, “I was embarrassed for you—never had I heard such candid revelations. Next I grew impatient, then critical and judgmental. Later I turned again: I grew to admire your courage and honesty. Turning still further, I felt touched by your trust in me. And now, today, I am left with great melancholy at the thought of leaving you. I dreamed of you last night—a sad dream.” “What was your dream, Friedrich?”

Returning from the window, Nietzsche sat and faced Breuer. “In the dream, I wake up here in the clinic. It is dark and cold. Everyone is gone. I want to find you. I light a lamp and search in vain through empty room after empty room. Then I descend the stairs to the common room where I see a strange sight: a fire—not in the fireplace, but a neat wood fire in the center of the room—and around that fire are eight tall stones, sitting as if they are warming themselves. Suddenly I feel tremendous sadness and start to weep. That’s when I really woke up.” “A strange dream,” Breuer said. “Any ideas about it?”

“I have just a feeling of great sadness, a deep longing. I’ve never wept in a dream before. Can you help?”

Breuer silently repeated Nietzsche’s simple phrase, “Can you help?” It was what he had longed for. Three weeks ago could he ever have imagined such words from Nietzsche? He must not waste this opportunity.

“Eight stones warmed by the fire,” he replied. “A curious image. Let me tell you what occurs to me. You remember, of course, your severe migraine in Herr Schlegel’s Gasthaus?” Nietzsche nodded. “Most of it. For some of it, I was not present!”

“There’s something I haven’t told you,” Breuer said. “When you were comatose, you uttered some sad phrases. One of them was, ‘No slot, no slot.’ ”

Nietzsche looked blank. “ ‘No slot’? What could I have meant?”

“I think ‘no slot’ meant that you had no place in any friendship or any community. I think, Friedrich, you long for a hearth but fear your longing!”

Breuer softened his voice. “This must be a lonely time of the year for you. Already many of the other patients here are leaving to rejoin their families for the Christmas holidays. Perhaps that’s why the rooms are empty in your dream. When searching for me, you find a fire warming eight stones. I think I know what that means: around my hearth my family is seven—my five children, my wife, and I. Might you not be the eighth stone? Perhaps the dream is a wish for my friendship and my hearth. If so, I welcome you.” Breuer leaned forward to clasp Nietzsche’s arm. “Come home with me, Friedrich. Even though my despair is alleviated, we have no need to part. Be my guest for the holiday season—or better, stay for the entire winter. It would give me the greatest pleasure.” Nietzsche rested his hand on top of Breuer’s for a moment—just for a moment. Then he rose and walked again to the window. Rain, driven by the northeastern wind, violently lashed the glass. He turned.

“Thank you, my friend, for inviting me into your home. Yet I cannot accept.”

“But why? I’m convinced it would benefit you, Friedrich, and me as well. I have an empty room about the size of this one. And a library in which you could write.” Nietzsche shook his head gently but firmly. “A few minutes ago when you said you had gone to the outermost limits of your limited ability, you were referring to facing isolation. I, too, face my limits—the limits of relatedness. Here, with you, even now as we talk face to face, soul to soul, I abut against these limits.” “Limits can be stretched, Friedrich. Let us try!”

Nietzsche paced back and forth. “The moment I say, ‘I cannot bear loneliness any longer,’ I fall to untold depths in my own estimation—for I’ve deserted the highest that is in me. My appointed path requires me to resist the dangers that may lure me away.” “But, Friedrich, joining another is not the same as abandoning yourself! Once you said there was much you could learn from me about relationships. Then allow me to teach you! At times it’s right to be suspicious and vigilant, but at other times one must be able to relax one’s guard and permit oneself to be touched.” He stretched his arm out to him. “Come, Friedrich, sit.” Obediently, Nietzsche returned to his chair and, closing his eyes, took several deep breaths. Then he opened his eyes and plunged. “The problem, Josef, is not that you might betray me: it is that I have been betraying you. I’ve been dishonest with you. And now, as you invite me into your home, as we grow closer, my deceit eats away at me. It is time to change that! No more deceit between us! Permit me to unburden myself. Hear my confession, my friend.” Turning his head away, Nietzsche fixed his gaze on a small floral cluster in the Kashan rug and, in a quavering voice, began. “Several months ago, I became deeply involved with a remarkable young Russian woman named Lou Salomé. Before then I had never allowed myself to love a woman. Perhaps because I was inundated with women early in life. After my father died, I was surrounded by cold, distant women—my mother, my sister, my grandmother and aunts. Some deep noxious attitudes must have been laid down because ever since I have regarded with horror a liaison with a woman. Sensuality—a woman’s flesh—seems to me the ultimate distraction, a barrier between me and my life mission. But Lou Salomé was different, or so I thought. Though she was beautiful, she also appeared a true soulmate, my twin brain. She understood me, pointed me in new directions—toward dizzying heights I had never before had the courage to explore. I thought she would be my student, my protégée, my disciple.

“But then, catastrophe! My lust emerged. She used it to play me off against Paul Rée, my close friend who had first introduced us. She led me to believe I was the man for whom she was destined, but when I offered myself, she spurned me. I was betrayed by everyone—by her, by Rée, and by my sister, who attempted to destroy our relationship. Now everything has turned to ashes, and I live in exile from all whom I once held dear.” “When you and I first talked,” Breuer interjected, “you alluded to three betrayals.”

“The first was Richard Wagner, who betrayed me long ago. That sting has now faded. The others were Lou Salomé and Paul Rée. Yes, I did allude to them. But I pretended that I had resolved the crisis. That was my deception. The truth is that I have never, even to this moment, resolved it. This woman, this Lou Salomé, invaded my mind and set up housekeeping there. I still cannot dislodge her. Not a day passes, sometimes not an hour, without my thinking of her. Most of the time I hate her. I think of striking out at her, of publicly humiliating her. I want to see her grovel, beg me to take her back! Sometimes the opposite—I long for her, I think of taking her hand, of our sailing on Lake Orta, of greeting an Adriatic sunrise together——” “She is your Bertha!”

“Yes, she is my Bertha! Whenever you described your obsession, whenever you tried to root it out from your mind, whenever you tried to understand its meaning, you were speaking for me as well! You were doing double work—mine as well as yours! I concealed myself—like a woman—then crawled out after you had left, placed my feet in your footprints, and attempted to follow your path. Coward that I was, I crouched behind you and allowed you alone to face the dangers and humiliations of the trail.” Tears were running down Nietzsche’s cheeks, and he wiped them dry with a handkerchief.

Now he raised his head and faced Breuer directly. “That is my confession and my shame. Now you understand my intense interest in your liberation. Your liberation can be my liberation. Now you know why it is important for me to know precisely how you cleansed Bertha from your mind! Now will you tell me?” But Breuer shook his head. “My trance experience is now hazy. But even if I were able to recall precise details, what value would they be to you, Friedrich? You yourself told me that there is no the way, that the only great truth is the truth we discover for ourselves.” Bowing his head, Nietzsche whispered, “Yes, yes, you are right.”

Breuer cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “I can’t tell you what you wish to hear, but, Friedrich”—he paused, his heart racing. Now it was his turn to plunge—“there is something I must tell you. I, too, have not been honest, and it is time now for me to confess.” Breuer had a sudden awful premonition that, no matter what he said or did, Nietzsche would regard this as the fourth great betrayal in his life. Yet it was too late to turn back.

“I fear, Friedrich, that this confession may cost me your friendship. I pray it does not. Please believe that I confess out of devotion, for I cannot bear the thought of your learning from another what I am about to say, of your feeling once again—a fourth time—betrayed.” Nietzsche’s face froze into deathmask stillness. He sucked in his breath as Breuer began: “In October, a few weeks before you and I first met, I took a brief holiday with Mathilde to Venice, where there was a strange note waiting for me at the hotel.” Reaching into his jacket pocket, Breuer handed Nietzsche Lou Salomé’s note. He watched Nietzsche’s eyes widen in disbelief as he read.

21 October 1882

Doctor Breuer,

I must see you on a matter of great urgency. The future of German philosophy hangs in the balance. Meet me at nine tomorrow morning at the Cafe Sorrento.

Lou Salomé

Holding the note in his trembling hand, Nietzsche stammered, “I don’t understand. What—what———”

“Sit back, Friedrich, it’s a long story, and I must tell it from the beginning.”

For the next twenty minutes, Breuer related everything—the meetings with Lou Salomé; her learning about Anna O.’s treatment from her brother, Jenia; her plea on Nietzsche’s behalf; and his own agreeing to her request for help.

“You must be wondering, Friedrich, whether a physician has ever agreed to a more bizarre consultation. Indeed, when I look back on my talk with Lou Salomé, I find it hard to believe I agreed to her request. Imagine! She was asking me to invent a treatment for a nonmedical ailment and to apply it surreptitiously to an unwilling patient. But somehow she persuaded me. In fact, she regarded herself a full partner in this endeavor and, in our last meeting, demanded a report of the progress of ‘our’ patient.” “What!” exclaimed Nietzsche. “You saw her recently?”

“She appeared unannounced in my office a few days ago, and insisted I provide her with information about the progress of the treatment. Of course, I gave her nothing, and she left in a huff.” Breuer continued, revealing all his perceptions about the course of their work together: his frustrated attempts to help Nietzsche; his knowing that Nietzsche concealed his despair about the loss of Lou Salomé. He even shared his master plan—how he pretended to seek treatment for his own despair in order to keep Nietzsche in Vienna.

Nietzsche jerked upright at this revelation. “So, all this has been pretense? ”

“At first,” Breuer acknowledged. “My plan was to ‘handle’ you, to play the cooperative patient while I gradually reversed the roles and eased you into becoming a patient. But then the real irony occurred when I became my role, when my pretense of patienthood became reality.” What else was there to tell? Searching his mind for other details, Breuer found none. He had confessed all.

Eyes closed, Nietzsche bowed his head and clutched it with both hands.

“Friedrich, are you all right?” asked Breuer in concern.

“My head—I’m seeing flashing lights—both eyes! My visual aura———”

Breuer immediately assumed his professional persona. “A migraine is trying to materialize. At this stage, we can stop it. The best thing is caffeine and ergotamine. Don’t move! I’ll be right back.” Rushing from the room, he dashed downstairs to the central nursing desk and then to the kitchen. He returned in a few minutes carrying a tray with a cup, a pot of strong coffee, water, and some tablets. “First, swallow these pills—ergot and some magnesium salts to protect your stomach from the coffee. Then I want you to drink this entire pot of coffee.” Once Nietzsche swallowed the pills, Breuer asked, “Do you want to lie down?”

“No, no, we must talk this through!”

“Lean your head back in your chair. I’ll darken the room. The less visual stimulation, the better.” Breuer lowered the shades on the three windows and then prepared a cold wet compress, which he draped over Nietzsche’s eyes. They sat silent for a few minutes in the dusk. Then Nietzsche spoke, his voice hushed.

“So Byzantine, Josef—everything between us—all so Byzantine, so dishonest, so doubly dishonest!”

“What else could I have done?” Breuer spoke softly and slowly so as not to rouse the migraine. “Perhaps I should never have agreed in the first place. Should I have told you earlier? You would have turned on your heel and walked away, forever!” No response.

“Not true?” Breuer asked.

“Yes, I’d have caught the next train out of Vienna. But you lied to me. You made promises to me——”

“And I honored every promise, Friedrich. I promised to conceal your name, and I kept that promise. And when Lou Salomé inquired about you—demanded to know is more accurate—refused to speak of you. I refused even to let her know we were meeting. And one other promise I kept, Friedrich. Remember I said that when you were comatose you uttered some phrases?” Nietzsche nodded.

“The other phrase was ‘Help me!’ You repeated it over and over.”

“’Help me!’ I said that?”

“Again and again! Keep drinking, Friedrich.”

Nietzsche having emptied his cup, Breuer filled it once more with the thick black coffee.

“I remember nothing. Neither ‘Help me’ nor that other phrase, ‘No slot’—that wasn’t me talking.”

“But it was your voice, Friedrich. Some part of you spoke to me, and I gave that ‘you’ my promise to help. And I never betrayed that promise. Drink some more coffee. Four full cups is my prescription.” As Nietzsche drank the bitter coffee, Breuer rearranged the cold compress on his brow. “How does your head feel? The flashing lights? Do you want to stop talking for a while and rest?” “I’m better, much better,” said Nietzsche in a weak voice. “No, I don’t want to stop. Stopping would agitate me more than talking. I’m used to working while feeling like this. But first let me try to relax the muscles in my temples and scalp.” For three or four minutes, he breathed slowly and deeply while counting softly, and then spoke. “There, that’s better. Often I count my breaths and imagine my muscles relaxing with each count. Sometimes I keep focused by concentrating only on the breathing. Have you ever noticed that the air you breathe in is always cooler than the air you breathe out?” Breuer watched and waited. Thank God for the migraine! he thought. It forces Nietzsche, even for a short time, to remain where he is. Under the cold compress, only his mouth was visible. The mustache quivered as if he were on the verge of saying something and then, apparently, thought better of it.

Finally, Nietzsche smiled. “You thought to manipulate me, and all the while I thought I was manipulating you.”

“But, Friedrich, what was conceived in manipulation has now been delivered into honesty.”

“And—ach!—behind everything there was Lou Salomé, in her favorite position, holding the reins, whip in hand, controlling both of us. You’ve told me a great deal, Josef, but one thing you’ve left out.” Breuer stretched out his hands, palms up. “I have nothing more to hide.”

“Your motives! All of this—this plotting, this deviousness, the time consumed, the energy. You’re a busy physician. Why did you do this? Why did you ever agree to become involved?” “That’s a question I have often asked myself,” said Breuer. “I don’t know the answer other than to say it was to please Lou Salomé. Somehow she enchanted me. I could not refuse her.” “Yet you refused her the last time she appeared in your office.”

“Yes—but by then I had met you, made promises to you. Believe me, Friedrich, she was not pleased.”

“I salute you for standing up to her—you did something I never could. But tell me, at the beginning, in Venice, how did she enchant you?”

“I’m not sure I can answer that. I only know that after half an hour with her I felt I could refuse her nothing.”

“Yes, she had the same effect on me.”

“You should have seen the bold way she strode to my table in the café.”

“I know that walk,” said Nietzsche. “Her imperial Roman march. She doesn’t bother to watch for obstacles, as though nothing would dare block her path.”

“Yes, and such an air of unmistakable confidence! And something so free about her—her clothes, her hair, her dress. She’s entirely released from convention.” Nietzsche nodded. “Yes, her freedom is striking—and admirable! In that one thing we can all learn from her.” He slowly turned his head and appeared pleased at the absence of pain. “I’ve sometimes thought of Lou Salomé as a mutation, especially when one considers that her freedom blossomed in the midst Of a dense bourgeois thicket. Her father was a Russian general, you know.” He looked sharply at Breuer. “I imagine she was immediately personal with you? Suggested you call her by her first name?” “Exactly. And she gazed directly into my eyes and touched my hand as we spoke.”

“Oh yes, that sounds familiar. The first time we met, Josef, she disarmed me completely by taking my arm when I was leaving and offering to walk me back to my hotel.” “She did precisely the same thing with me!”

Nietzsche stiffened, but went on. “She told me that she didn’t want to leave me so quickly, that she had to have more time with me.”

“Her precise words to me, Friedrich. And then she bristled when I suggested my wife might be unsettled by seeing me walking with a young woman.”

Nietzsche chuckled. “I know how she’d have reacted to that. She doesn’t look kindly on conventional marriage—she considers it a euphemism for female indenture.” “Her very words to me!”

Nietzsche slumped down in the chair. “She flaunts all convention, except one—when it comes to men and sex, she’s as chaste as a Carmelite!”

Breuer nodded. “Yes, but I think perhaps we misinterpret the messages she sends. She’s a young girl, a child, unaware of the impact of her beauty upon men.” “There we disagree, Josef She is entirely aware of her beauty. She uses it to dominate, to suck men dry, and then move on to the next one.”

Breuer pressed on. “Another thing—she flaunts convention with such charm that one can’t help becoming an accomplice. I surprised myself by agreeing to read a letter Wagner wrote you, even though I suspected she had no right to possess it!” “What! A letter from Wagner? I never noticed one was missing. She must have taken it during her Tautenberg visit. Nothing is beneath her!”

“She even showed me some of your letters, Friedrich. I felt immediately drawn into her deepest confidence.” Here Breuer felt he was taking perhaps the greatest risk of all.

Nietzsche jerked upright. The cold compress fell from his eyes. “She showed you my letters? That vixen!”

“Please, Friedrich, let’s not awaken the migraine. Here, drink this last cup and then lean back and let me replace the compress.”

“All right, Doctor, on these matters I follow your advice. But I think the danger is over—the visual flashes have disappeared. Your drug must be taking effect.” Nietzsche drank the remaining lukewarm coffee in one swallow. “Finished—enough of that—that’s more coffee than I drink in six months!” After slowly twisting his head around, he handed Breuer the compress. “I don’t need this now. My attack seems to be gone. Amazing! Without your help it would have progressed into several days of torment. A pity”—he ventured a glance at Breuer—“I can’t carry you with me!” Breuer nodded.

“But how dare she show you my letters, Josef! And how could you have read them?”

Breuer opened his mouth, but Nietzsche held up his hand to silence him. “No need to answer. I understand your position, even the way you felt flattered by being chosen as her confidant. I had the identical reaction when she showed me love letters from Rée and from Gillot, one of her teachers in Russia who also fell in love with her.” “Still,” Breuer said, “it must be painful for you, I know. I would be devastated to learn that Bertha had shared our most intimate moments with another man.” “It is painful. Yet it’s good medicine. Tell me everything else about your meeting with Lou. Spare me nothing!”

Now Breuer knew why he had not told Nietzsche about his trance vision of Bertha walking with Dr. Durkin. That powerful emotional experience had released him from her. And that was precisely what Nietzsche needed-not a description of someone else’s experience, not an intellectual understanding, but his own emotional experience, strong enough to rip away the illusory meanings he had heaped upon this twenty-one-year-old Russian woman.

And what more powerful emotional experience than for Nietzsche to “eavesdrop” upon Lou Salomé as she entranced another man with the same artifices she had once turned on him? Accordingly, Breuer searched his memory for every minute detail of his encounter with her. He began to recount to Nietzsche her words: her wish to become his student and protégée, her flattery, and her desire to include Breuer in her collection of great minds. He described her actions: her preening, her turning her head first one way, then the other, her smile, her cocked head, her open and adoring gaze, the play of her tongue as she moistened her lips, the touch of her hand as she rested it on his.

Listening with his great head rolled back, his deep eyes closed, Nietzsche seemed overcome by emotion.

“Friedrich, what were you feeling as I spoke?”

“So many things, Josef.”

“Describe them to me.”

“Too much to make sense of.”

“Don’t try. Just chimneysweep.”

Nietzsche opened his eyes and looked at Breuer, as though to reassure himself that there would be no further duplicity.

“Do it,” Breuer urged. “Consider it a physician’s orders. I am well acquainted with someone similarly afflicted who says it helped.”

Haltingly, Nietzsche began. “As you talked about Lou, I remembered my own experiences with her, my own impressions—identical—uncannily identical. She was the same with you as she was with me—I feel stripped of all those pungent moments, those sacred memories.” He opened his eyes. “It’s hard to let your thoughts talk—embarrassing!”

“Trust me, I can personally testify that embarrassment is rarely fatal! Go on! Be hard by being tender!”

“I trust you. I know you speak from strength. I feel——” Nietzsche stopped, his face flushed.

Breuer urged him on. “Close your eyes again. Perhaps it will be easier to talk without looking at me. Or lie down on the bed.”

“No, I’ll stay here. What I wanted to say is that I’m glad you met Lou. Now you know me. And I feel a kinship with you. But at the same time, I feel anger, outrage.” Nietzsche opened his eyes as if to ascertain that he had not offended Breuer, and then he continued, in a soft voice, “I feel outraged by your desecration. You’ve trampled on my love, ground it into the dust. It’s painful, right here.” He tapped his fist upon his chest.

“I know that spot, Friedrich. I, too, felt that pain. Remember how upset I got every time you called Bertha a cripple? Remember——”

“Today I am the anvil,” Nietzsche interrupted, “and it is your words that are hammer blows—crumbling the citadel of my love.”

“Keep going, Friedrich.”

“That’s all my feelings—except sadness. And loss, much loss.”

“What have you lost today?”

“All those sweet, those precious private moments with Lou—gone. That love we shared—where is it now? Lost! Everything ground down to dust. Now I know I’ve lost her forever!” “But, Friedrich, possession must precede loss.”

“Near the Lake of Orta”—Nietzsche’s tone grew softer yet, as if to keep his words from trampling his delicate thoughts—“she and I once climbed to the top of the Sacro Monte to watch a golden sunset. Two luminous coral-tinted clouds that looked like merging faces sailed by. We touched softly. We kissed. We shared a holy moment—the only holy moment I have ever known.” “Did you and she ever speak again of that moment?”

“She knew of that moment! I often wrote her cards from afar referring to Orta sunsets, Orta breezes, Orta clouds.”

“But,” Breuer persisted, “did she ever speak of Orta? Was it for her also a holy moment?”

“She knew what Orta was!”

“Lou Salomé believed I should know everything about her relationship to you, and therefore took pains to describe each of your meetings in the greatest detail. She omitted nothing, she claimed. She spoke at length of Lucerne, Leipzig, Rome, Tautenberg. But Orta—I swear to you!—she mentioned only in passing. It made no particular impression on her. And one other thing, Friedrich. She tried to recall, but she said that she didn’t remember if she had ever kissed you!” Nietzsche was silent. His eyes flooded with tears, his head hung down.

Breuer knew he was being cruel. But he knew that not to be cruel now would be crueler yet. This was a singular opportunity, one that would never come again.

“Forgive my hard words, Friedrich, but I follow the advice of a great teacher. ‘Offer a suffering friend a resting place,’ he said, ‘but take care it be a hard bed or field cot.’ ” “You’ve listened well,” Nietzsche replied. “And the bed is hard. Let me tell you how hard. Can I make you understand how much I have lost! For fifteen years, you’ve shared a bed with Mathilde. You’re the central person in her life. She cares about you, touches you, knows what you like to eat, worries if you’re late. When I extrude Lou Salomé from my mind—and I realize that nothing less than this is now taking place—do you know what I have left?” Nietzsche’s eyes focused not on Breuer but rather inward, as if he were reading from some internal text.

“Do you know that no other woman has ever touched me? Not to be loved or touched-ever? To live an absolutely unobserved life-do you know what that is like? Often I go for days without saying a word to anyone, except perhaps ”Guten Morgen’ and “Guten Abend’to my Gasthaus owner. Yes, Josef, you were right in your interpretation of ‘no slot.’ I belong nowhere. I have no home, no circle of friends to whom I speak daily, no closet full of belongings, no family hearth. I don’t even have a state, for I have given up my German citizenship and never remain in one place long enough to get a Swiss passport.” Nietzsche looked piercingly at Breuer, as if he wished to be stopped. But Breuer was silent.

“Oh, I have my pretenses, Josef, my secret ways of tolerating aloneness, even glorifying it. I say that I must be separate from others to think my own thoughts. I say that the great minds of the past are my companions, that they crawl out of their hiding places into my sunshine. I scoff at the fear of solitude. I profess that great men must undergo great pain, that I have flown too far into the future, and that none can accompany me. I crow that if I am misunderstood or feared or rejected, then so much the better—it means I am on target! I say that my courage in facing aloneness without the herd, without the illusion of a divine provider, is proof of my greatness.

“Yet over and over I am haunted by one fear——” He hesitated for a moment, then plunged ahead. “Despite my bravado about being the posthumous philosopher, despite my certitude that my day will come, despite even my knowledge of eternal return—I am haunted by the thought of dying alone. Do you know what it’s like to know that when you die, your body may not be discovered for days or weeks, not until the aroma beckons some stranger? I try to soothe myself. Often, in my deepest isolation, I speak to myself. Yet not too loudly, for I fear my own hollow echo. The one, the only one, who filled this hollowness was Lou Salomé.” Breuer, finding no voice for his sorrow, or for his gratitude that Nietzsche had chosen to confide these great secrets in him, listened silently. Within him, the hope grew stronger that he might, after all, still succeed in being the doctor for Nietzsche’s despair.

“And now, thanks to you,” Nietzsche wound up, “I know that Lou was merely illusion.” He shook his head and stared out the window. “Bitter medicine, Doctor.” “But, Friedrich, to pursue truth, don’t we scientists have to renounce all illusion?”

“TRUTH with capital letters!” Nietzsche exclaimed. “I forget, Josef, that scientists have still to learn that TRUTH, too, is an illusion—but an illusion without which we can’t survive. So I shall renounce Lou Salomé for some other, yet unknown, illusion. It’s hard to realize she’s gone, that there’s nothing left.” “Nothing left of Lou Salomé?”

“Nothing good.” Nietzsche’s face was pinched in disgust.

“Think about her,” Breuer urged. “Let images appear to you. What do you see?”

“A bird of prey—an eagle with bloody claws. A wolfpack, led by Lou, my sister, my mother.”

“Bloody claws? Yet she sought help for you. All that effort, Friedrich—a a trip to Venice, another to Vienna.”

“Not for me!” Nietzsche replied. “Maybe for her own sake, for atonement, for her guilt.”

“She doesn’t strike me as one burdened by guilt.”

“Then perhaps for the sake of art. She values art—and she valued my work, work already done and work yet to come. She has a good eye—I’ll credit her with that.

“It’s strange,” Nietzsche mused. “I met her in April, almost exactly nine months ago, and now I feel a great work quickening. My son, Zarathustra, stirs to be born. Perhaps nine months ago, she sowed the seed of Zarathustra in the furrows of my brain. Perhaps that’s her destiny—to impregnate fertile minds with great books.” “So,” Breuer ventured, “in appealing to me in your behalf, Lou Salomé may not be the enemy, after all.”

“No!” Nietzsche pounded the arm of his chair. “You said that, I didn’t. You’re wrong! I’ll never agree that she had concern for me. She appealed to you on her own behalf, to fulfill her destiny. She never knew me. She used me. What you’ve told me today verifies that.” “How?” Breuer asked, though he knew the answer.

“How? It’s obvious. You told me yourself, Lou is like your Bertha—she’s an automaton, playing her role, the same role, with me, with you, with one man after the other. The particular man is incidental. She seduced both of us in the same way, with the same female deviousness, the same guile, the same gestures, the same promises!” “And yet this automaton controls you. She dominates your mind: you worry about her opinion, you pine for her touch.”

“No. No pining. No longer. What I feel now is rage.”

“At Lou Salomé?”

“No! She’s unworthy of my anger. I feel self-loathing, anger at the lust that forced me to crave such a woman.”

Is this bitterness, Breuer wondered, any better than obsession or loneliness ? Banishing Lou Salomé from Nietzsche’s mind is only part of the procedure. I need also to cauterize the raw wound left in her place.

“Why such anger at yourself?” he asked. “I remember your saying we all have our wild dogs barking in the cellar. How I wish you could be kinder, more generous to your own humanity!” “Remember my first granite sentence—I’ve recited it to you many times, Josef—’Become who you are’? That means not only to perfect yourself but also not to fall prey to another’s designs for you. But even falling in battle to another’s power is preferable to falling prey to the woman-automaton who never even sees you! That is unforgivable!” “And you, Friedrich, did you ever really see Lou Salomé?”

Nietzsche jerked his head.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“She may have played her role, but you, what role did you play? Were you, and I, so different from her? Did you see her? Or did you, instead, see only prey—a disciple, a plowland for your thoughts, a successor? Or perhaps, like me, you saw beauty, youth, a satin pillow, a vessel into which to drain your lust. And wasn’t she also a spoil of victory in the grunting competition with Paul Rée? Did you really see her or Paul Rée when, after you met her for the first time, you asked him to propose marriage to her in your behalf? I think it wasn’t Lou Salomé you wanted, but someone like her.” Nietzsche was silent. Breuer continued, “I shall never forget our walk in the Simmeringer Haide. That walk changed my life in so many ways. Of all that I learned that day, perhaps the most powerful insight was that I had not related to Bertha, but instead to all the private meanings I had attached to her—meanings that had nothing at all to do with her. You made me realize that I never saw her as she really was—that neither of us truly saw one another. Friedrich, isn’t that true for you as well? Perhaps no one is at fault. Perhaps Lou Salomé has been used as much as you. Perhaps we’re all fellow sufferers unable to see each other’s truth.” “It is not my desire to understand what women wish.” Nietzsche’s tone was sharp and brittle. “It’s my wish to avoid them. Women corrupt and spoil. Perhaps it is simply enough to say that I am ill suited for them, and leave it at that. And, in time, that may be my loss. From time to time, a man needs a woman, just as he needs a home-cooked meal.” Nietzsche’s twisted, implacable answer plunged Breuer into reverie. He thought of the pleasure he drew from Mathilde and his family, even the satisfaction he drew from his new perception of Bertha. How sad to think that his friend would be forever denied such experiences! Yet he could think of no way to alter Nietzsche’s distorted view of women. Perhaps it was too much to expect. Perhaps Nietzsche was right when he said that his attitudes toward women had been laid down in the first few years of his life. Perhaps these attitudes were so deeply embedded as to remain forever beyond the reach of any talking treatment. With this thought, he realized he had run out of ideas. Moreover, there was little time left. Nietzsche would not remain approachable much longer.

Suddenly, in the chair beside him, Nietzsche took off his spectacles, buried his face in his handkerchief, and burst into sobs.

Breuer was stunned. He must say something.

“I wept too when I knew I had to give up Bertha. So hard to give up that vision, that magic. You weep for Lou Salomé?”

Nietzsche, his face still buried in the handkerchief, blew his nose and shook his head vigorously.

“Then, for your loneliness?”

Again, Nietzsche shook his head.

“Do you know why you weep, Friedrich?”

“Not certain,” came the muffled reply.

A fanciful idea occurred to Breuer. “Friedrich, please try an experiment with me. Can you imagine your tears having a voice?”

Lowering his handkerchief, Nietzsche looked at him, red-eyed and puzzled.

“Just try it for a minute or two,” Breuer urged gently. “Give your tears a voice. What would they say?”

“I feel too foolish.”

“I felt foolish, too, trying all the strange experiments you suggested. Indulge me. Try.”

Without looking at him, Nietzsche began, “If one of my tears were sentient, it would say—it would say”—here he spoke in a loud, hissing whisper—“ ‘Free at last! Bottled up all these years! This man, this tight dry man, has never let me flow before.’ Is that what you mean?” he asked, reverting to his own voice.

“Yes, good, very good. Keep going. What else?”

“What else? The tears would say”—again the hissing whisper—“ ‘Good to be liberated! Forty years in a stagnant pool. Finally, finally, the old man has a housecleaning! Oh, how I’ve wanted to escape before! But no way out—not until this Viennese doctor opened the rusty gate.’ ” Nietzsche stopped and daubed his eyes with his handkerchief.

“Thank you,” said Breuer. “An opener of rusty gates—a splendid compliment. Now, in your own voice, tell me more about the sadness behind these tears.”

“No, not sadness! On the contrary, when I talked to you a few minutes ago about dying alone, I felt a powerful surge of relief. Not so much wheat I said, but that I said it, that I finally, finally shared what I felt.” “Tell me more about that feeling.”

“Powerful. Moving. A holy moment! That’s why I wept. That’s why I weep now. I’ve never done this before. Look at me! I can’t stop the tears.”

“It’s good, Friedrich. Strong tears are cleansing.”

Nietzsche, his face buried in his hands, nodded. “It’s strange, but at the very moment when I, for the first time in my life, reveal my loneliness in all its depth, in all its despair—at that precise moment, loneliness melts away! The moment I told you I had never been touched was the very moment I first allowed myself to be touched. An extraordinary moment, as though some vast, interior icepack suddenly cracked and shattered.” “A paradox!” said Breuer. “Isolation exists only in isolation. Once shared, it evaporates.”

Nietzsche raised his head and slowly wiped the tear tracks from his face. He ran his comb through his mustache five or six times and once again donned his thick spectacles. After a brief pause, he said, “And I have still another confession. Perhaps,” he looked at his watch, “the final one. When you came into my room today and announced your recovery, Josef, I was devastated! I was so wretchedly self-absorbed, so disappointed at losing my raison d’être for being with you, that I could not bring myself to rejoice in your good news. That kind of selfishness is unforgivable.” “Not unforgivable,” replied Breuer. “You yourself taught me that we are each composed of many parts, each clamoring for expression. We can be held responsible only for the final compromise, not for the wayward impulses of each of the parts. Your so-called selfishness is forgivable precisely because you care enough about me to share it with me now. My parting wish for you, my dear friend, is that the word ‘unforgivable’ be banished from your lexicon.” Nietzsche’s eyes once again filled with tears, and again he pulled out his handkerchief.

“And these tears, Friedrich?”

“The way you said ‘my dear friend.’ I’ve often used the word ‘friend’ before, but not until this moment has the word ever been wholly mine. I’ve always dreamed of a friendship in which two people join together to attain some higher ideal. And here, now, it has arrived! You and I have joined together precisely in such a way! We’ve participated in the other’s self overcoming. I am your friend. You are mine. We are friends. We—are—friends.” For an instant, Nietzsche seemed almost gay. “I love the sound of that phrase, Josef. I want to say it over and over.” “Then, Friedrich, accept my invitation to stay with me. Remember the dream: your slot is at my hearth.”

At Breuer’s invitation, Nietzsche froze. He sat slowly shaking his head before answering. “That dream both entices and torments me. I’m like you. I want to warm myself by a family hearth. But I’m frightened by giving in to comfort. That would be to abandon myself and my mission. For me, it would be a type of death. Perhaps that explains the symbol of an inert stone warming itself.” Nietzsche rose, paced for a moment or two, and then stopped behind his chair. “No, my friend, my destiny is to search for truth on the far side of loneliness. My son, my Zarathustra, will be ripe with wisdom, but his only companion will be an eagle. He will be the loneliest man in the world.” Nietzsche looked again at his watch. “I know your schedule well enough by this time, Josef, to realize your other patients are waiting for you. I can’t keep you much longer. Each of us must go our own way.” Breuer shook his head. “It crushes me that we have to part. It’s unfair! You’ve done so much for me and received so little in return. Perhaps Lou’s image has lost its power over you. Perhaps not. Time will tell. But there seems much more we could do.” “Don’t underestimate what you have given me, Josef. Don’t underestimate the value of friendship, of my knowing I’m not a freak, of my knowing I’m capable of touching and being touched. Before, I only half embraced my concept of Amor fati. I had trained myself—resigned myself is a better term—to love my fate. But now, thanks to you, thanks to your open hearth, I realize I have a choice. I shall always remain alone, but what a difference, what a wonderful difference, to choose what I do. Amor fati—choose your fate, love your fate.” Breuer stood and faced Nietzsche, the chair between them. Breuer walked around the chair. For a moment, Nietzsche looked frightened, cornered. But, at Breuer’s approach, arms spread, he, too, opened his arms.

At noon, on 18 December 1882, Josef Breuer returned to his office, to Frau Becker and his waiting patients. Later he dined with his wife, his children, his father- and mother-in-law, young Freud, and Max and his family. After dinner, he napped and dreamed about chess and the queening of a pawn. He continued the comfortable practice of medicine for thirty more years but never again made use of the talking cure.

That same afternoon, the patient in room 13 at the Lauzon Clinic, Eckart Müller, boarded a fiacre to the train station and thence traveled south, alone, to Italy, to the warm sun, the still air, and to a rendezvous, an honest rendezvous, with a Persian prophet named Zarathustra.