A Small Town on the Outskirts of Philadelphia
October, 1929
Cal made sure that the coast was clear before he hastily crossed the street. He was all alone. His shiny new Rolls Royce was parked a few blocks away and he had ordered his chauffeur and his valet to wait for his return. After all, he was one of the most influential businessmen of the forty-eight states, feared by many and envied by even more. And by God, he wanted it to stay that way.
When he arrived at a ten foot high wall surrounding the stately mansion on the other side of the street, he slackened his pace. The massive iron gates that kept intruders out of the garden were closed. Of course they were. His heart began to quicken as he pulled on the rope, ringing the bell to announce his arrival. Unfortunately, I'll be informing everybody within a one mile radius as well, he thought, gnashing his teeth. With all the money that I pay them, they could have at least installed an electric doorbell.
He had to ring the bell three times more until the porky face of one of the employees appeared on the other side of the gate. It belonged to the janitor of this place, a stocky phlegmatic type of man in his late thirties. Unhurried, as if they had all the time in the world, he took out his key ring and started searching for the right one amidst the numberless small silvery keys that were attached to it.
"What's taking you so long?" Cal, who was used to see servants jump at his call, groaned in annoyance.
The janitor shrugged, not bothering to look up at their guest. "Well, there are a lot of keys." He was even slow when he talked. "I'm sorry, Mr. Hockley."
Cal's eye twitched. "Don't you ever call me by my name again before we're inside these walls," he hissed in a low voice, and took a nervous look around at the still deserted street. "There are people in this town who know me."
The man looked at Cal, unperturbed, as if he was about to shrug another time, but then thought differently of it. "It won't happen again, sir." The keys clattered as he continued examining them, one by one. "How's business doing?" he asked casually, as if chitchatting with wealthy businessmen was an integral part of a janitor's normal work routine.
Cal briefly wondered if the man was aware that he was the owner of a nationwide company that a third of all employable men of Pittsburgh received their paycheck from. He replied with a patronizing smile. "I lost a deal some days ago, but I don't think it will affect this year's overall performance. The stock prices have boomed over the last year and have now stabilized on a high plateau. This is going to be the best year in the history of my company."
The janitor didn't respond anything more than "Uh hum," but at least he finally managed to fish out the right key. Nevertheless, Cal didn't miss the confused and uncomfortable look on his face. Not that he had expected anything different. Cal wondered why he even bothered to talk to people like this man–dimwits who probably couldn't spell plateau, let alone grasp the principles of the stock market. Why did he have to put up with people of this sort?
Because I married a woman who turned into a delirious nutcase, he thought bitterly, and held his head bent like a sinner as he passed through the opened gate.
And not any sort of delirium! Of all the things to fantasize about, she thinks she's in love with another man. A steerage rat, no less! Cal shuddered to think of the sunny morning not so long ago when Rose informed her dumbfounded maid of her plans to start anew with a penniless artist as soon as the Titanic docked in New York. As any other mental disease might have, though highly improbably, elicited sympathy from his peers, this lunatic idea would forever mark him and his family as the laughingstock of the East Coast if it became known.
"Did you come to visit your wife today?" the janitor asked when the two of them made their way to the hospital's main entrance–Cal walking, him slouching.
Cal instantly had a bitter taste in his mouth at the thought of Rose in hospital clothing, bedraggled and unkempt like a harlot. "This is none of your concern, but as a matter of fact, no, I didn't. I came here today because I have an appointment with her new physician."
"Ah, you mean the new shrink?" The janitor pulled open the heavy door of the main building. If it weren't for the bars at the windows, one could have taken it for the rural mansion of an English lord.
Rose wasn't the only patient of this facility, but certainly the one with the richest and most influential husband—and most importantly, one who would have considered it an outrage not to bring his influence to bear if he saw a chance to do so. His recent endeavor included the hiring of Professor Steinberg, an iconic scholar of the University of Vienna and allegedly a renowned expert of the human soul. He had started his work at the hospital two weeks ago and as soon as his first day at the hospital, Cal had told him in no uncertain terms via telephone that the treatment of his wife had absolute priority.
Now, the janitor pointed to a grand staircase. "The professor's office is on the first floor. I'll lead the way."
*****
Professor Steinberg was dressed impeccably, only a little old-fashioned in his attire, but not more or less so than you would expect from a person in his academic position. His well-trimmed gray, full beard gave him a benign, almost grandfatherly appearance and an authoritative aura at the same time.
The professor's office was already completely furnished. The shelves were heavy with books of all shapes and kinds, many of them with foreign titles. A few books lay opened or closed on the solid mahogany desk, the centerpiece of the room. There must have been thousands of different volumes in this room, but Cal was far from being impressed by their number, as his wife's personal library easily matched this one in size and variety.
"Please take a seat, Mr. Hockley," the professor said with only a hint of an Austrian accent. "Can I offer you anything? Coffee, a cigar?"
Cal sat down on the other end of the professor's desk and opted for the coffee. "Agnes, two cups of coffee and my pipe," the professor called, and shortly afterwards, a young nurse entered the room and placed a tray with the demanded objects on the professor's desk.
"I hope you don't mind that I smoke," Professor Steinberg said after the nurse had left the room. He began stuffing his pipe.
"Not at all," Cal replied.
"Nothing accompanies a cup of coffee better than a pipe. Besides, it helps me concentrate."
"I know of many men who feel that way," Cal answered politely, and started unconsciously tapping his feet while the alpine miracle healer lit his pipe.
"So…" the professor began, and then leaned back on his chair. "You came here on behalf of my evaluation of your wife's case?"
"I certainly didn't come here because I enjoy the janitor's wisecracks."
"I see," the professor said. "Let's talk about your wife, then…Rose Hockley, patient since..."
"April of this year. Seven months already," Cal interjected, stressing each syllable of the outrageously long period of time.
The professor drew on his pipe and nodded. Gray clouds of smoke curled out of his mouth and perfumed the air with their sweet smell. "Tell me about Mrs. Hockley's mother and father."
"What do you want to know?"
"How would you describe her relationship to her mother?"
"Ruth? She was an extraordinary woman from one of the most distinguished families. She was very close to Rose. Called her on the phone almost every day. Sadly, she passed away three years ago. This came as a terrible shock for my wife, so much that she was indisposed the day of her mother's funeral; struck with a terrible headache."
The professor opened a drawer of his mahogany desk and pulled out a small notebook and a pen. "And her father?" he asked after flipping the notebook open.
"I'm afraid I can't tell you much about her father, since he died before I could meet him. From what I gathered about him, he was a reckless, irresponsible man."
Throughout the following thirty minutes, Cal went into detail about what he had heard about Mr. DeWitt Bukater and how this man had lost everything he owned, apart from the love of his only daughter, of course, who idolized him beyond all reason, all of which the professor neatly summarized in three words that he wrote in his notebook—unresolved oedipal conflict.
"If there is such a thing as a cause for her illness, look no further than him. Him and her unhealthy obsession with these obscene paintings she collected, among many other ludicrous things," Cal concluded.
Professor Steinberg nodded. "It certainly is part of the puzzle, but does it fully explain her current condition?" He relit his pipe before answering his own question, a small smile tugging on his lips. "I don't think so."
"Then what is it that drove her to insanity, in your expert opinion?" Cal asked with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
"As I have been told, you never boarded the Titanic with her," the professor said, blatantly ignoring Cal's question. "What is your explanation for her condition? Why is she imagining sailing on the Titanic?"
"I'm afraid I can't follow you, professor," Cal said, snorting. "You are looking for logic for where there is none. She is sick." He waved his hand in front of his head to strengthen his point.
"She obviously is. But this argument is misleading, because it relies upon its own proposition. She's ill. That's why she thinks she sails on the Titanic. She thinks she sails on the Titanic. That's why she is ill. We're stuck in circular reasoning. I was asking for the deeper causes. Why is she choosing the Titanic, of all things?"
"Why the Titanic, you ask? Didn't they call it the ship of dreams?" He gave a quick and confident laugh, but his face looked as if he was in pain. "I'm convinced that every attempt to make sense of her insanity is bound to fail. Look, professor, we didn't board the Titanic because, fortunately, she was fully booked when I arranged for our passage to the states. We left one week prior to her maiden voyage. When the New York Times proclaimed her sinking, we were back in Philadelphia already, safe and sound. One month later, I married her." They had traveled on the Mauritania, to be exact. Cal even had photos of it. But, of course, Rose couldn't have been swayed from her conviction by something as ridiculous as evidence.
Mr. Steinberg cleared his throat before asking the next question. "Did she lose anybody she knew on the Titanic?"
"Rose and I had met the Astors and Benjamin Guggenheim on a few occasions, but they had never been close friends of either of our families."
The professor breathed out a couple of smoke rings and then looked at them pensively as they were slowly disappearing. "How did she react to the news of the sinking? Did you notice anything strange about her before the wedding?" he asked.
Cal sneered. "Ask me for one single moment of our engagement when she was not acting peculiar! I took her out for dinner to an exquisite French restaurant and she acted like she was going to her execution. I gave her a diamond of immeasurable value and she complained that it was dreadfully heavy." Cal's laugh sounded faint and out of place. He continued in a sober voice, "She was in constant complaint. Nothing was ever good enough for her. She was trying my patience and her mother's. Of course, I knew beforehand that being married to a girl like her would not be a walk in the park. But she was a beauty beyond compare and I needed to claim her before anyone else could. She was melancholy, but I didn't pretend to know why. I think I must have persuaded myself that she was still young and...malleable."
The professor lifted his eyebrows. "And? Was she?"
Cal took a deep breath before answering, "I made her my wife on a beautiful day in May, 1912. She became a lot easier to handle after this step, and one year later, she gave birth to our first son. And just like I had predicted, her stubbornness was just a phase. A childlike rebellion that lasted until she sailed into the haven of matrimony with a strong man by her side. After one year of marriage, she was the most docile and angelic wife one could think of. And she was beautiful. God, she was beautiful." Cal ran a shaky hand through his gray-streaked black hair.
Professor Steinberg frowned and scribbled down a few notes in German. "When did the hallucinations first present themselves?"
"Last April."
"What happened in April?"
Cal sighed exasperatedly. "Frankly, I don't understand why we're having this conversation. It's all in her medical files that your predecessor had so scrupulously filled. He would have made an exquisite secretary. This knucklehead has obviously missed his vocation."
"Indeed, her medical file contains more than fifty pages," the professor retorted matter-of-factly. "But as her new physician, I want to hear it from you for myself. Furthermore, I'm afraid my colleague might not have asked the right questions."
"Then would you be so kind to start asking the right questions, professor?"
"I will." The professor leaned back and started blowing smoke rings in the air. When Cal was just about to complain again, he started to speak. "Did she love you?"
Cal's jaw tensed. "Pardon me?" He almost choked out the words.
"Did she love you? Was Mrs. Hockley–Rose—ever as infatuated by you as you obviously were with her?"
"This is unacceptable! What an inappropriate question! I gave everything for that woman!" Cal shouted, slamming his fist on the desk so hard that the porcelain cups clattered on the tray. "Do you have any idea what would have become of her and her mother if it weren't for me? They'd be dirt-poor and forced to live among the scum of the earth! I paid all their debts—almost a million dollars, to be exact. And as if that weren't enough, I spoiled her excessively. All her rooms are stuffed with over-priced paintings and sculptures, one more grotesque looking than the other. And blind with love and genuine affection as I was, I spent a fortune on this bizarre collection of hers! I gave her what other girls could only dream of, and more than she ever had before!"
"I see," the professor responded, his voice still as clear and calm as if he was inquiring about the most mundane subject in the world. "Did she enjoy the act of love, Mr. Hockley?"
"That does it!" Cal jumped off as if stung by a bee, knocking down the chair. "I’ve had enough of this charade! This is outrageous! Is this the way you talk to my wife during your so-called therapeutical sessions?" He pointed at the professor menacingly. "If it ever reaches my ears that you're bothering Mrs. Hockley with such unadulterated filth, be warned, I'll sue you for quackery!"
Suddenly, they heard a female voice call out, "Is everything all right, professor?" and a moment later, the young nurse ripped open the door. Wide-eyed, she looked from the old professor, who was still sitting perfectly calm in his chair with his pipe in his hand, to his slightly disheveled guest, hovering over the desk as if he was about to strike out.
For a few heartbeats, everybody stayed frozen to their spot. Then Cal came back to his senses. He swiftly stepped back and put up the chair he had knocked over.
"Everything is fine, Agnes. Now, be a darling and go back to your room," the professor ordered.
"Yes, sir." The woman scurried out of the professor's office as quickly as she could.
After the door had clicked, Professor Steinberg focused his attention on Cal who, meanwhile, had sat down again, straightening his suit and brushing back the hair from his forehead. "Are you feeling calm again, Mr. Hockley?"
Cal took a deep breath. He wasn't about to give a polite, "Yes, sir," like a little boy who had been called out by his headmaster for starting a fight on the schoolyard.
"Maybe we should resume this conversation another day," the professor suggested.
"No," Cal said without missing a beat. "I want to see my wife."
"I know that you haven't visited her in a while, but are you sure that now is the right moment to..." the professor began to say, and for the first time, there was an edge of caution in his voice.
"It is." Cal looked the professor straight in the eye, unflinching. "I want to see her. I demand to see her. Now."
And I won't go until I have.
Professor and steel magnate stared at each other in silence for a few seconds. Eventually, Mr. Steinberg broke the eye contact and, with a sigh, drew on his pipe for the last time. After putting it in the ashtray, he called for the young nurse again. "Agnes! The keys, please!"