by Marlene Lee
“Is it possible to share power and to share love?” Dr. Naef said.
But Agnes didn’t hear her. “For instance,” she rushed on, “I’ve been invited to give a speech on Gandhi to an English class at the University. Chatto says I can’t do it because I don’t know enough.” She looked up, desperate. “I think I know enough. I think he’s angry because they didn’t invite him.”
“Who invited you, Agnes?”
“A friend I met in Russia, Emma Goldman. She knows someone who teaches at Berlin University. Emma thinks it would be good for me to give a talk.”
“You must give this speech.”
Agnes picked up the pillow from the end of the couch and held onto it. Her throat seized up and she had to cough. She sank back onto the couch.
“I can’t give a talk in a university,” she whispered. “I never even finished grade school.”
“You’re very familiar with the Indian independence movement. You are a fine speaker. Sometimes you hold me enthralled, Agnes. You are quite capable of giving a talk on Gandhi.” Dr. Naef looked at the clock on the wall and stood. “I will speak to your husband,” she said in a brisk tone. “Perhaps Freud would not, but I will. He is depressed and fails to grasp the situation. Allow me to speak to him.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow over lunch, if he is free. Perhaps I can explain what this would mean to your recovery.”
“I think maybe he is afraid his—you know what—has been cut off.”
“Do not be too sure,” said Dr. Naef. “Easy answers can be wrong. But it is possible your success threatens him at this particular time.”
“Maybe I should just stay sick,” Agnes said. She stood up and reached for her coat on its hook.
“No,” said Dr. Naef. “You will not stay sick. And neither will Chatto. Both of you must work through this difficulty.”
At the door Agnes hesitated. “You’re much better than Florence’s psychiatrist,” she said. “You’re better than Freud himself.”
Dr. Naef looked startled. “We do not all agree with Dr. Freud in every respect,” she said. “I am perhaps less objective than he would like.” She gazed at a spot above Agnes’ head. “I believe the relationship between the patient and analyst is, in itself, healing.”
Agnes reached out to Dr. Naef and the two women shook hands.
On the day of the lecture Agnes could barely haul herself out of bed.
“I can’t give the talk,” she said to Chatto who was dressing to go out. “I’m too sick.”
Chatto gave up the attempt to tame his wiry hair and replaced the comb in his pocket. He shrugged. “It is your decision.” He stared out the window glumly, then turned back and said with an effort, “I will be in the audience. It will be a disservice to all concerned if you cancel the speech.”
Agnes glanced away. She knew how much it had cost Chatto to meet with Dr. Naef. When he’d returned home he’d even admitted to an interest in psychoanalysis, this phenomenon of the twentieth century, but he refused to discuss Agnes’ case.
“The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” he had said, pleased with the figure of speech. “If you regain your health I will have much respect for this psychoanalysis.”
That night, the lecture hall was crowded. In his introduction the professor described Agnes’ years of work for Indian independence. He mentioned Chatto. He listed her publications, more than she remembered writing. She had perched on the edge of the speaker’s chair in case she decided to jump down from the platform and run. But instead of running, she found herself taking steps toward the lectern.
She held her shaking hands behind her back and began to read from the speech she’d typed on thin paper. After reading several lines she began to hear the words. By the time she reached the paragraphs on revolution in exile, she grew interested, herself, in the sweep of the movement. She had been so busy with small parts of the work that she had failed to see history’s firm grip on the Indian subcontinent.
Eight or ten Chinese students sat in the back row, their faces impassive. Chatto sat directly in front of them, his gray hair standing out from his head. As she neared the end of the lecture, she sought him out. Strangely, although he was in sharp focus, his face began to grow small, as if she were seeing through the wrong end of a telescope. Fascinated, she watched him grow smaller and smaller until she could hardly see his face against the row of Chinese students behind him. She acknowledged the applause and answered a question from the audience.
Yes, she said, she was confident that India would gain its freedom. She was confident that history was moving, even at that very moment, to make other changes in Asia as well. As she spoke, Chatto appeared in actual size again, and with the return to normality, she realized, in a matter-of-fact way, that she was no longer of use to Chatto. In an anti-climactic moment of clarity, she knew he belonged to her past, and it occurred to her that time’s flow can only be caught in occasional fleeting moments, like this one. That we are too busy to understand our lives and our work. That in those rare moments when we see ourselves clearly, we have already been used up, thrown away, and are being made ready for the next task.
We are thrown away, Agnes thought, so the world will get better.
She answered another question from the audience, and then she ended the evening with a question of her own: what will be the next massive change to occur in Asia?
She watched the Chinese students in the last row leave the hall. They did not look back. They had asked no questions and given no answers.
“I understand your lecture was a great success,” Dr. Naef said at their next session. “In one generation you have leapt from frontier farm to European university.”
Agnes closed her eyes. She could not remember ever feeling worse. Chatto and she had fought the night before. He was jealous of everything she did; everyone she met. He had now become a patient of Dr. Eitingon, the analyst who founded the Berlin Institute. But instead of contributing to his relationship with Agnes, analysis seemed to be driving the wedge between them ever deeper.
“We are both being analyzed and we are both miserable,” Agnes said to Dr. Naef. “The only difference between us is that I pay for my analysis and Chatto gets his free.”
Dr. Naef lifted her eyebrows. “Chatto is not paying for his analysis?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because an Indian who is such a wreck is interesting. But I’m just an American.”
Dr. Naef smiled. “You are a wreck, too. That should give you some comfort.” Agnes was too depressed to laugh. She covered her eyes with her forearm and lay without moving on the couch.
“The purpose of psychoanalysis is to develop understanding,” Dr. Naef said. “Happiness is something else again.” She waited for some kind of response, but there was none.
“Do you want to stay with Chatto?”
“No.”
“Do you want to leave him?”
Agnes made no reply.
“In any case,” said Dr. Naef, “you are profoundly sad. I have seen you in many moods, Agnes. I have seen you elated, despondent, and many degrees of feeling in-between.”
Agnes nodded.
“But now I think you are facing the grief that is at your core. Falling ill, plunging into activity, anger, none of that will do now. You are strong enough to endure your sadness. It is a sadness you have earned. It is yours.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Agnes whispered.
“Your throat is constricted with unshed tears. I think when you have accepted your grief, your body will not work at cross purposes with your mind.”
“Why must I be sad?”
“Do you know, yourself, why you must be sad?”
“Mother,” Agnes whispered. “Father. The children.”
“Your family has made you sad,” Dr. Naef said after a bit. “Your own intelligence has made you sad. You have taken on burdens. They will not make you happy, but they are yours.”
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br /> “There are burdens I should have taken on.”
“You were not strong enough at the time.”
“I wish someone would carry me.”
“Chatto would carry you if you let him.”
“But that puts me in a weak position.”
Dr. Naef lifted her hands. “You are in conflict.”
“Sometimes I feel I cannot live.”
“You have lived more than thirty years,” Dr. Naef said. “Why not tell a story about those thirty years? Tell it thoroughly until you understand yourself. You are a fine story-teller. In writing, I think you will find peace.”
“Who should I tell it to?” asked Agnes.
“Who were you talking to in your speech the other night?”
“The audience.”
“Who is your audience when you tell stories from your life?”
“You.”
Dr. Naef sat in thought. “You need a larger audience than one,” she said. “You can write a book. It will be a very good book, I assure you.”
“For who?” Agnes corrected herself: “For whom?”
“For the world. You are interesting enough to hold the world’s attention.”
“For a moment, maybe.”
Dr Naef smiled. “No one can ask for more than a moment.”
22
Berlin 1928
Rain on the window panes blurred the houses across Holsteinischstrasse. Agnes fought back a rising desire to see Dr. Naef. She sat with the manuscript, Daughter of Earth, resting in her lap. With the intensity of a child who wants to show her mother, father, lover, God himself, what she has made, she longed to run through the wet streets of Berlin and deliver the manuscript of her book to her analyst.
Writing the book hasn’t improved my personality, she would say right off the bat. You said it would cure me, but it hasn’t. I still come running back to you.
It is a good sign, this passion for your book, Dr. Naef might reply. It has done its work. You are alive again.
Agnes had begun the book in Denmark three years earlier, with a young Indian lover established in a cottage adjoining the house of writer Karin Michaelis. On that small island separated from the mainland of Denmark by a narrow sound of limpid gray water, it was Bakar, not Chatto, who interrupted her work, called her to his cottage two and three times a day, not to mention the nights. But she would not tell Dr. Naef about Bakar. Dr. Naef liked Chatto. And Dr. Naef believed in marriage.
Agnes heard a question so clearly that she felt compelled to answer it:
Was Chatto in Denmark with you, Agnes?
Nope. He was back in Berlin. I couldn’t have written if he’d been with me. I will never go back to Chatto, Dr. Naef. I will not commit myself to one man, deny myself sexual and creative freedom. Take Florence, for instance. Generous, silly Florence has gotten married.
Let us examine these feelings about Florence, Dr. Naef seemed to say.
I don’t need to examine my feelings. I’m disgusted because she’s abandoned her writing, her independence. She’s caved in to convention and I’m disappointed in her. But then, she always was a ninny.
Would that have been a shadow passing across Dr. Naef’s eyes?
A ninny, you say, except when she sends you $25 every month.
$25 is peanuts to Florence, Dr. Naef. I am not embarrassed to accept money from rich friends.
The rain outside her window had let up. Agnes lit a cigarette and shook out the match. But Dr. Naef’s presence was not to be obscured by a small cloud of smoke.
What do your women friends mean to you, Agnes?
Agnes inhaled deeply and closed her eyes. Dr. Naef, she imagined, was leaning forward, the roll of hair at the back of her head shiny and in place, her expression of professional calm not quite hiding personal interest.
What is Tilla Durieux to you, Agnes?
Startled, then irritated, Agnes opened her eyes and tapped off the ash.
Tilla took me on as a friend and a project. For three years she supported me. I wore her elegant, hand-me-down clothes. I was driven here and there in Berlin, even on trips outside Berlin, by her chauffeur. People gossip, particularly some of Chatto’s friends who are already against me for being Western and outspoken. They think I was sexual with Tilla. But let them talk. Without Tilla I couldn’t have afforded to write the book. Wouldn’t have had an introduction to my publisher. Eventually I grew tired of Tilla’s wealth. The taste of upper-class life began to cloy. I felt terrible seeing beggars from the back seat of her Reis-Benz motor car. I liked Tilla, but I had no illusions. I accepted the friendship, money, training, connections. Now can we stop talking about the past?
Dr. Naef’s face came clearly into focus.
You’re in charge of this conversation, Agnes.
It had stopped raining. Agnes laid her manuscript aside, got her coat, and walked to the konditoria on Hohenzollern where she ordered coffee. Berliners, many of them back to their pre-war stoutness, had to have their cakes and kuchen every day. Agnes took only coffee. She found eating a chore, and endured stomach pains off and on. Her friend Käthe Kollwitz once sketched her in a hospital bed, skin and bones, the face of a refugee.
Käthe was one of the few friends Agnes had not borrowed money from. Käthe was poor, and in the presence of the great artist, Agnes had felt ashamed wearing Tilla’s fussy clothes.
She’d been given money by Margaret Sanger, Karin Michaelis, and there were others. She knew quite well that she was a poor manager of money. She had a contempt for money which, she admitted, did not prevent her from accepting cash. Friends saw how poor she was and how hard she worked. They wanted to help her. She threw herself into tasks that they could not or would not do, and they paid her. Fine. It was one more tool a lower-class girl could use to get through life.
She drank her coffee. Absently she watched the waitress behind the counter move the last slices of cake from a soiled plate to a clean one, shuffle the sweets onto paper doilies, then wipe away the crumbs. All must be clean. All must be tidy. Germany. She would be happy to leave Germany.
And how is Chatto?
Chatto joined the Communist Party. He asked me to join, too, but I can’t, no more than I can join in a marriage. I can’t submit to anything or anyone. Besides, Communists don’t understand the working class. They’re not realistic about poor and ignorant people.
She finished her coffee and set the cup down decisively.
No more questions, Dr. Naef. I have something to tell you. I’m finished with Berlin. I’m going to China.
China? Dr. Naef’s nostrils flared with interest. You’ve made up your mind?
Yes. I’m Shanghai correspondent for the Frankfurt Zeitung. Europe is tired, and I’m tired of Europe. The future is Asia. That’s where a writer like me belongs.
Dr. Naef’s eyes were a bright blue.
I’m going to write about China for Indian newspapers. I’m going to introduce Indians who live in the treaty ports to Nationalist Chinese. I’m going to work for revolution. England is done for. I want to be in Asia when the Empire dies.
Agnes paid for the coffee and put on her coat. For a moment she allowed herself to be pleased. She was burning brightly. If she didn’t get sick, didn’t get discouraged or depressed, she could burn on and on.
The door of the konditoria banged shut behind her. The wind was drying the streets. At the corner, she turned left and began walking at a brisk pace.
She was not going to see Dr. Naef. She had known it all along. The past was the past. It was over. Used up. Her work was the future. China called.
23
Manchuria 1928
Agnes pressed herself into one corner of her compartment and waited for the train to pull out of the Berlin station.
Everything she knew about China deserted her. Asia had become a continent not to be talked about, but to be lived. The other half of the world was as near as the other half of herself. It felt like a destiny which she now wished to evade. All that first night, upright a
nd tense, she was aware of her heartbeat; felt, in fact, like a massive heart, herself, valves squeezing open and shut.
White ground rushed by the frost-patterned window. The train stopped often for snow to be shoveled off the tracks. At the Russian border, a solitary guard stood silent and watchful in his boots and great coat, rifle butt resting on the ground, fixed bayonet even with the red star on his peaked hat. He faced west as uncertainly as Agnes faced east.
Several side trips and six weeks later when she stepped down from the train onto Manchurian ground, a pack of fifteen or twenty coolies came running toward her. Behind them, wet, falling snow nearly obliterated the single light bulb hanging outside the Customs shed. The conductor shouted something in Russian and made a motion as if he were tossing coins from the train. The ragged clot of men scattered, then gathered again, fighting to get close to the foreign woman, to pick up her suitcase and portable typewriter. They stuck their open hands into her face for money and touched her clothes.
A blast of steam pierced the Northeast China night. The train that had carried her across the vast Russian steppe huffed, labored, and began to move. Agnes wanted to run alongside it, shouting to be let back on. Instead, she stood motionless and stared into the heart, not of 1928, but of the Middle Ages. She followed the coolies into the Customs shed where a powerfully built Mongol studied her papers patiently and without comprehension.
In Harbin she found an interpreter. He was slim and lithe and his black hair gleamed in the winter sunlight. He concentrated when she spoke, for his English was rudimentary.
“America,” he said. “Too far.”
They tramped in the snow past stores filled with hunting, trapping, and fishing gear. Lucrative retail trade centered around furs: squirrel, fox, Russian sable, Siberian bear, Korean tiger. Mongolian dogs were raised for their long silky hair. Her interpreter tried to explain that, since the spirits of human ancestors were housed within their narrow skulls, the dogs must not be killed but must be allowed to die naturally.