The Final Testament Read Free

me by advancing my career.”
    â€œBut you did not,” Freud observed quietly.
    â€œNo. I did not.”
    Sauerwald exhaled and relaxed his hands, allowing the normal color to return to his face.
    â€œI was given back my passport and allowed to board the Orient Express with my family,” the doctor noted, taking care to articulate each word despite the prosthesis. “I am in another country, safe from ‘the hangman’s rope,’ as you call it. My wife is with me, my children are secure. But you continue to speak as if I had reason to fear you. Why?”
    â€œDr. Freud, you still have four sisters living in Austria,” Sauerwald replied. “Don’t you?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œFor the moment, they are safe and free. But I promise you, under the Reich, that will not last.”
    The doctor looked away, his eyes gliding past all his other rescued antiquities as he thought of his spinster sister Dolfi. An old maid who had devoted her life to caring for their mother. Freud’s jaw ached and dampness spotted the corner of his right eye as he sniffed deeply.
    â€œSo what is it exactly that you came here to discuss?” he asked.
    â€œI wish to talk to you about books, Dr. Freud.” Sauerwald crossed his ankles, settling in more comfortably.
    â€œ Books? ”
    â€œYes, the books that you are writing and the books that you will publish. Of course, you are much more experienced than I am in this realm, Dr. Freud. So I believe we can help each other.”
    â€œHow can that be?”
    â€œIf I may?” The corners of Sauerwald’s eyes crinkled as he put down the leather case and stood up. “I’ve been looking at a pile of papers sitting on your desk as we’ve been speaking. They appear thick enough to be the body of a manuscript.”
    Freud did not turn. He knew exactly what page was on top.
    â€œWould I be right in assuming that this is the doctor’s latest book?” Sauerwald asked, starting to cross the room.
    â€œIt might be,” Freud grunted.
    â€œThen this would be the long-awaited Moses book, wouldn’t it?”
    Sauerwald was standing less than a foot from him now, hovering vampirishly over Freud’s desk, staring at the pages written in longhand through hours of excruciating pain.
    â€œIt might be,” Freud said, refusing to meet Sauerwald’s eye or acknowledge that this guest in his house had transgressed by coming into such close physical proximity with his private work area.
    â€œYou’ve been working on this for some time, haven’t you?” Sauerwald let his fingertips lightly brush the curled corner of a page. “I read the excerpts in Imago .”
    Freud looked askance. “I am surprised that high-ranking members of the Nazi party subscribe to obscure journals for psychoanalysts.”
    â€œYou’re forgetting that I am a doctor and scientist myself, herr Freud.” Sauerwald pursed his lips as if insulted. “And I am not quite a high-ranking member of the party. At least not yet. But as I said, I have taken a keen interest in your work since going through your papers.”
    â€œI should be flattered, then,” Freud said drily, still refusing to look at him, even as the flowery smell of Sauerwald’s cologne made him cringe inwardly and caused his eyes to water.
    There was a soft ripple of paper as Freud realized that the guest was now turning pages.
    â€œYou are a very brave man, Dr. Freud. You’ve said many things other people were afraid to say in the course of your work.”
    â€œSome of my critics think that they should never have been said.”
    â€œYes, of course.” Freud turned his head just enough to see the visitor nodding and turning pages more quickly. “The ego and the unconscious. The unhealthy repression of sexual urges. The fixations with anal and oral functions. The death drive. Few people would have dared to think of such