CHAPTER 1 T HE CHIMES OF SAN SALVATORE broke into Josef Breuer’s reverie. He tugged his heavy gold
watch from his waistcoat pocket. Nine o’clock. Once again, he read the small silver-bordered card he had received the day before. 21 October 1882 Doctor 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 Café Sorrento. Lou Salomé An impertinent note! No one had addressed him so brashly in years. He knew of no Lou Salomé. No address on the envelope. No way to tell this person that nine o’clock was not convenient, that Frau Breuer would not be pleased to breakfast alone, that Dr. Breuer was on vacation, and that “matters of urgency” had no interest for him—indeed, that Dr. Breuer had come to Venice precisely to get away from fr om matters matters of o f urgency urg ency.. Yet here he was, at the Café Sorrento, at nine o’clock, scanning the faces around him, wondering which one might be the impertinent Lou Salomé. “More coffee, sir?” Breuer nodded to the waiter, a lad of thirteen or fourteen with wet black hair brushed sleekly back. How long had he been daydreaming? He looked again at his watch. Another ten minutes of life squandered. And squandered on what? As usual he had been daydreaming about Bertha, beautiful Bertha, his patient for the past two years. He had been recalling her teasing voice: “Doctor Breuer, why are you so afraid of me?” He had been remembering her words when he told her that he would no long l onger er be her doctor do ctor:: “I will wait. You will always be the the only man in i n my life.” He berated himself: “For Go God’ d’ss sake, stop! Stop Stop thinking! Open your eyes! Loo Look! k! Let Let the the world wor ld in!” Breuer lifted his cup, inhaling the aroma of rich coffee along with deep breaths of cold Venetian October air. He turned his head and looked about. The other tables of the Café Sorrento were filled with breakfasting men and women—mostly tourists and mostly elderly. Several held newspapers in one hand and coffee cups in the other. Beyond the tables, steel-blue clouds of pigeons hovered and swooped. The still waters of the Grand Canal, shimmering with the reflections of the great palaces lining its banks, were disturbed only by the undulating wake of a coasting gondola. Other gondolas still slept, moored to twisted poles which lay askew in the canal, like spears flung down haphazardly by some giant hand. “Yes, that’s right—look about you, you fool!” Breuer said to himself. “People come from all over the wor wor ld to see s ee Venice—people Venice—people who r efuse to die befor e they are blessed bl essed by this beauty beauty.” How much of life have I missed, he wondered, simply by failing to look? Or by looking and not seeing? seeing ? Yesterday Yesterday he had taken taken a solitar so litaryy walk around aro und the the island of o f Murano and, at an hour ’s end, end, had
