As Wheeler Burden climbed the narrow stairs to Dr. Freud’s second-floor apartment on his third morning in Vienna, he was more than a little familiar with the building and its soon-to-be-famous occupant. As he knocked on the door, we know from his journal, he was filled with both awe and relief. The awe came because from his earliest days he had heard stories of the great man from his mother, who as a young woman had been a devoted disciple, then later, because of her Persephone Rising, a famous antagonist. And he felt the relief because this bold move on his part promised to lead to some kind of support for his desperate condition. Recently, in preparing the Haze’s book Fin de Siècle, in which a whole chapter was devoted to Freud, Wheeler had devoured many descriptions of the man and the apartment, including many photographs. So Wheeler felt well prepared for what he was about to see and the delicate intrusion into the great man’s history he was about to engineer.
Also, from his journal, we know something of his purpose in concocting the plan, his thinking that if he could interest Dr. Freud in his plight, he could perhaps prevail on him for room and board, at least until the Frisbee was ready, or until he found some other means. But we know also that Wheeler was fully aware that he would be walking a fine line between interesting the doctor and interfering with the great man’s future, something he very decidedly wished not to do. A fine line indeed, but he was confident that he was up to the challenge.
The maid answered and led him into a small waiting room, where he sat for some time before the door to the inner sanctum opened and Wheeler found himself staring into the face of one of the most famous men of the twentieth century. Freud was surprisingly short, five six or so, and meticulously groomed. His manner was immediately cordial, curious perhaps, but definitely guarded. “How may I help you?” he said.
Wheeler reached out his hand. “My name is Harry Truman,” he said as he entered the study. “I was wondering if I could have a moment of your time.” Caught off guard perhaps or simply wishing to be polite, Freud took the hand and invited his guest in without much second thought. There is, of course, the possibility that from the very first glance the doctor recognized in this visitor the potential of a conversation, and even more importantly, fellowship.
What might have had something to do with his willingness was that at this moment in 1897, Sigmund Freud was at a transition point, waiting for an inspiration. He was still two years away from his monumental Interpretation of Dreams and over ten years away from the fame and recognition he gained in 1909, when, seemingly out of the blue, the great Viennese doctor would receive a rather remarkable invitation to travel to America and deliver a series of lectures at Clark University, near Boston, “his breakout event,” Wheeler called it. And, of course, the great doctor, laboring in near obscurity in 1897 Vienna, had no way of knowing that the arrival of this strange visitor was setting in motion a series of events that would lead to that all-important invitation.
But the storyteller is getting ahead of herself. Here in 1897, the great doctor was at a pivotal point in his career, just formulating his first historic connection with mythology, catalyzed by his recent attendance at a production of Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex. In a letter to a friend, he had recently written, “I have discovered in the human condition a great similarity with the Greek myth of Oedipus, who murdered his father and married his mother.” This shift to the “Oedipus complex” meant that he had moved away from his broader child-abuse theories and was now seeing as the cause of devastating sexual hysteria a primal drive he would describe and would fervently continue to believe in for the rest of his life. In short, he would conjecture, little children wanted to murder and sleep with their parents.
For the past decade Freud had been on the trail of the unconscious mind and the connection between mental state and physical disorder, and proof positive that the causes of physical ailments were often mental. Alone with his patients in his office, he had begun to realize the power of what he called “the talking cure.” Patients with debilitations could find relief by simply engaging in free-form exposition.
Like Darwin’s new science, where clues to the mysteries of evolution rested on the surface of the earth in fossils, the clues to the mysteries of the unconscious lay in surface gestures and words. Freud, an astute observer anyway, had over the past few years become obsessive in his observations of mannerisms and how they presented clues to the unconscious mind. The clues, of course, led slowly to discoveries that the brilliant doctor hoped would eventually bring him notoriety, wealth, and fame, and in that stubborn and solitary quest had isolated himself. At this moment in Sigmund Freud’s life, for anyone such as Wheeler Burden who sought his attention there was one huge advantage. In 1897, in his early forties, Sigmund Freud was a deeply lonely man, desperate for companionship.
We can only speculate about Sigmund Freud’s reaction to his visitor. He must have been intrigued from the beginning, watching his strange guest with more than usual interest and care, searching for clues as he and the visitor exchanged introductory conversation.
He must have found himself uneasy and indefinably fascinated. This total stranger had shown up without introduction and without an appointment, entering the room confident, clear-eyed, and offering his hand as if meeting an old acquaintance. At first Freud might have suspected a prank, concocted perhaps by university students or Mayor Karl Lueger’s anti-Semitic nastiness, but those suspicions were put to rest by the obvious sincerity of his visitor.
From the doctor’s point of view, the new intruder, Harry Truman, he called himself, appeared to be in his late forties, about Freud’s age. He was tall and slender, and he wore a rumpled suit that looked as if it had been tailored for another man, and might have been slept in. His tanned skin suggested that he came from a clime sunnier than Vienna’s. Although he spoke intelligently and articulately in both German and English, he preferred the latter, obviously his native tongue, with an accent that suggested the western United States, with a touch of the British, although Freud admitted to not being proficient with American accents. His German, although perfectly understandable, was academic rather than colloquial. His hands were soft, suggesting a bourgeois lifestyle, his fingers long and delicate, like those of a musician.
Clearly, the man was less than fully familiar with Vienna and the Viennese, a fact that came out in a number of points of conversation. He seemed unusually open and forthright about most aspects of life, but he had spoken his name hesitantly: the thought that the name Harry Truman was a pseudonym occurred to Freud.
For certain, there was something he was hiding. Perhaps overly sensitive to the threat of being duped by the con man, Freud had trained himself to see duplicity in the eyes, the windows to the soul, and now with this stranger he watched for it vigilantly.
From the start Freud sensed that the man held him in a certain reverence and possessed more than a passing knowledge of his theories.
“You know my work then, Mr. Truman?”
“A bit,” the man said without hesitation, looking away for an instant, obviously hiding something while at the same time appearing almost too open and naïve. He was, after all, an American, and from his bearing Freud gathered that he had not traveled in Europe. How would he have known? A puzzlement.
Sigmund Freud usually knew the truth when he was being told it, at least truth as the patient saw it. Patients rarely lied for any other reason than to suppress painful thoughts and to avoid embarrassment. Even on the conscious level, some facts were simply too painful or confusing or even shocking to admit, although in time patients usually found they could discuss most details of their lives openly. Sometimes they lied for another purpose.
He often retold with amusement a story from his student days about a patient in the state mental hospital incarcerated because he was certain he was Napoleon Bonaparte. This particular patient was famous among the hospital staff for having an eye that twitched violently whenever he was in the middle of lying. One day, the patient was on his best behavior durin
g a psychological examination because he wanted very much to be released from the ward. He had been doing well in the interview, and when as a final question the doctors asked him if he was Napoleon, the man answered an emphatic no, and his eye began to twitch.
Now in his study with the surprise visitor, Freud bore in. “You are here then because of amnesia, Herr Truman?”
Wheeler nodded. “I have absolutely no idea how I got to Vienna.”
“What are your last memories?”
“I was in San Francisco,” Wheeler said, now genuinely troubled, struggling with his memory. “Then I drifted away. And I came to my senses slowly, walking along the Ringstrasse.” Up to this point he was telling the truth. His answers were clear and direct.
“San Francisco is very far from Vienna.” There was a calm neutrality to the doctor’s tone, nothing judgmental or accusing. “How long ago were you there?”
But now Wheeler’s eyes shifted focus, imperceptibly perhaps, unnoticeable to the untrained observer. “It was not long ago—” he began, clearing his throat. “A month ago.”
Freud would have sensed a change in his guest’s composure.
“What is it you want from me?” Sigmund Freud asked the intruder.
Wheeler thought for a long moment. “Perhaps we could trade. I need food, clothing, and a place to stay.”
Freud was unimpressed. “And what do I need?”
“Good male patients are hard to find, Herr Doktor.”
Freud smirked at the pretension that struck a little too close to home. “And what makes you think you would be for me a good patient?”
“I have a classic dilemma.”
“And what, pray tell, is this classic dilemma that would be of such great interest to me?”
Wheeler looked stunned and said nothing, his confidence evaporating. “I wouldn’t be believed,” he stammered.
Still waiting for some sign of the truth, the doctor said nothing, allowing his dark probing eyes to do their work. He rose slowly. “I am a busy man, Herr Truman—or whatever your name is. I see no reason for us to continue. I am not fond of being manipulated, and certainly not by someone who possesses all the mental faculties to know better.” He walked toward the door and spoke without looking back. “You will let yourself out, I assume.”
Wheeler was now in full panic, seeing his last hope of rescue slipping away. He stopped his reluctant host before he reached the door. “Wait!” he blurted out. Freud turned. The guest’s confident exterior had evaporated. Suddenly, an appearance of desperation had taken its place. He looked hungry, lost, and out of place in his ill-fitting suit. “I need your help, Dr. Freud.”
The doctor maintained his silence. He only stared at the pathetic visitor. Sigmund Freud was basically a kind man and did not wish to state the obvious: “And just why is your needing help of any interest to me?”
“My name is not Truman,” Wheeler said quickly, searching desperately for a change in the great doctor’s face, but seeing none offered more, words coming out in a stream, memories returning in a flood. “That is the name of a twentieth-century American president. My name is Wheeler Burden. The last thing I remember was San Francisco, just a few days ago.” He paused, and Freud would have seen that he was about to drop his bomb. “A few days ago, only it was 1988, at the end of next century.”
Freud had turned and taken a few steps back into the room, his interest now slightly piqued. “I was coming home from a bookstore,” Wheeler continued falteringly, “where I had gone for a signing. My new book—” He appeared now to be completely in the grip of returning memories that surprised even him. “My own book,” he said decisively. “And I was confronted by a man on my front steps. He had a gun. I knew this man, someone I hadn’t seen in years—” Wheeler was lost now in the trance of recall, suddenly not caring about the listener or the fine line he had planned to walk. “I just stared at him and began to slip away, at first terrified. I drifted and many thoughts and images came to me and then more and more of them involved scenes from the Ringstrasse, until I realized that was exactly where I was.”
He paused for a deep breath. Suddenly, he was looking at the doctor again, with an expression Freud would have characterized as both authentic and quizzical, one not even the most experienced con man could have counterfeited. “I came back a century to be here, Herr Doktor. I’ve been in Vienna now a couple of days.”
The great doctor stood near the doorway for a long moment, his eyes piercing the distance between them, taking in all that his guest’s unconscious was allowing to surface, aware that he was suddenly getting the truth.
“And there’s more,” Wheeler continued. He paused, trying to collect his thoughts, now desperate to keep the doctor’s attention, all hope of restraint now evaporated. “I think I am here for a purpose.”
“Yes?”
“I am here to tell you something.” Wheeler now looked uncomfortable, but no longer seeking approval.
“Well, Herr Burden,” said Dr. Freud, pausing then and taking a tentative step back into the room, his face betraying genuine empathetic concern. “We are making progress.”
Wheeler cleared his throat and looked away. Then his eyes drifted back to the surprisingly short man, surprisingly neat and precise, across from him in the fin-de-siècle Viennese study. “I am here to tell you—You will have to pardon me for saying this.” He spoke distinctly, all restraint and caution abandoned. “You will be known as one of the great minds of the twentieth century, some say the greatest mind. Your theories are taken as great cultural and psychological truths. You would be very pleased—” Wheeler paused and looked at Freud, who seemed remarkably calm, engaged, and waiting. “On some of it, sir, you are way off the mark.”
“So that is why you have come to see me now?”
“I have come to tell you, sir, that you are dead wrong.”
The great doctor stood for a moment, watching the face of his strange visitor, then he stepped back into the room. “It seems, Herr Burden, that we have much to talk about.” And the relationship between my son and the great doctor had begun.
15
Last Waltz
It was shortly after his grandmother’s funeral, in the Yale game, that Wheeler threw his legendary last pitch, “The Pitch,” as it became known.
He had been with his grandmother the last night. She had turned eighty-seven that winter, and her heart was not good. He spent time with her whenever he could, often arriving with stories of his adventures in school, in which she took unusual delight. He could not explain it, but somehow Wheeler felt completely comfortable and at home in his visits, able to sit with his grandmother and talk for hours or sit with her quietly and read. Sometimes he brought his guitar, once even bringing Joan Quigley.
That last night, Mrs. Spurgeon, the woman who had been with the Burden family for more than fifty years, cooked lamb with mint sauce and apple strudel for dessert. Wheeler and his grandmother dined together and moved to the living room after dinner. She was feeling very warm and nostalgic.
“These four years have been wonderful for me,” she said, looking across the couch at Wheeler. She seemed very tired. “I have felt very close to you and have seen you grow.” She paused and looked serious. “I know you will probably not stay at Harvard.” It sometimes astonished him that from the start she could intuit so much about him. “St. Gregory’s and Harvard have been good for you. Helped round off the edges. You have handled the assignment admirably,” she said with a warm smile.
“I have been a little too eccentric, Grandmother,” Wheeler said, in something of an understatement.
“You get eccentricity from your mother,” she said without apology. “That is a good thing. I have never told you this, but I always admired your mother. She was Jewish and a communist or a pacifist or whatever she was.” Wheeler had never heard his grandmother speak of his mother. “But I have admired her most for her life force. And she gave your father something he needed so very much.” She seemed to be floating back
over time, and her eyes moistened. “They would have had a deeply fulfilling life together.” She paused and collected herself. “Your father was such a good man, so full of talent and purpose. But too stiff and Bostonian, I always knew. She had something he needed. One could see a miraculous change in him. Under her influence, he was less staunch, more in touch with things, but also more vulnerable, as if he had just begun to feel. It was quite miraculous, actually.” Then she seemed to drift even further away, into a resigned sadness. She released a small controlled sigh that came from the depth of her being. “What a shame he could not have lived past the war. You would have enjoyed his company.” Then she smiled in total enjoyment. “And he yours.”
“I would have loved that,” Wheeler said. “Just to get to know him and see what he was really like.”
“You and your mother were greatly deprived.”
“Mother suffered, I know.” The thought stopped him. “You know Mother is different,” Wheeler said. His grandmother picked up on the tinge of apology in his voice.
“Do not undersell your mother. She is better than the whole pack of us Burdens.” There was a genuine warm sincerity to her words that surprised Wheeler. He had always thought his mother something of an embarrassment to the Burden family. “And, oh, how your father loved her. She had—” His grandmother paused, and Wheeler waited. “She had ardor.” Years later Wheeler still remembered how she pronounced that word and her devilish little smile. She repeated the word. “Ardor. That is what your straitlaced Brahmin father needed.”
“He could do so much,” Wheeler said. “He seemed to be a Renaissance man.”
“Yes,” she said, “but he was missing life force. That is what she gave him. Life force.” She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, as if trying to withdraw the very essence of this living room that held so much of her history: her own childhood, her early years of marriage, raising two daughters, her life with her only son, and even her brief memory of Wheeler’s mother, the Jewish girl from war-ravaged London.
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