Free City Of Fire Trilogy 1 - Dreamland by Kevin Baker Page A

made all the arrangements and now he stood waiting on the platform, smiling cheerfully, red Baedeker guide in hand. He had everything well in hand, and they met up with Jung on schedule at the ship’s luggage depot, where he was exulting openly over their trip:
    “Just think of the women we shall meet! The wealthy American females to analyze!”
    “Jah,” Freud had agreed more guardedly. “America should at least bring money, not cost money.”
    The money itself, when they did exchange it, was a disappointment. It was appallingly ugly, Freud thought, a thick, dull roll of notes, all the same size, black on the front, a picture of some exotic animal he took to be an American buffalo printed in green ink on the back.
    “Ah, there you are, there is no reason to go now,” he had joked with Ferenczi, still feeling relieved to be off the train. “I was only going so I could see a buffalo—or better yet, a porcupine!”
     
    Jung had been to Bremen before, which meant that he insisted on showing the way around the sites, the usual churches and picturesque stairs. At the cathedral there was a Bleikeller, a lead cellar, where they could stare down at the preserved body of a workman. He had fallen from the cathedral roof four hundred years before, and the lead had mummified his body—his skin tanned like fine leather, mouth stretched into a final scream by the contraction of the tendons in his neck, arms still clutching scraps of his medieval guild’s shift up around his neck. Looking inconceivably ancient—
    Freud found the whole thing morbid, but at lunch that afternoon Jung could not stop talking about it.
    “Perfectly preserved like that! A window into the past!”
    “Yes, but why wasn’t he taken out of there and buried?”
    “What does it matter?” Jung shrugged, knifing aggressively through his fish. “He serves our purposes.”
    “But why?” Freud pondered. “Did they just go on working, with his corpse in the cellar?”
    “Why not? Is a cemetery burial any less barbaric?”
    They were dining at a fish restaurant, the Essinghaus, which had a fine menu of Rhone wines. It was a glorious summer day, bright and warm, but not too hot yet. Their dining room was full of light and flowers, and everyone was talking about the air show in Berlin, and whether Orville Wright would bring his new machine over from America.
    Jung would not stop dwelling on the man in the lead cellar. Freud tried to distract him by urging him to drink some of the delicious wine. He could barely drink it himself after his night on the train but he knew that Jung had not had a drop since the start of Forel’s abstinence campaign at the Burgholzli, nine years before. He resisted for a moment, contemplating both the wine and Freud—then poured himself a full glass.
    “Jah, I am renouncing my abstinence,” Jung said with sudden decisiveness, his eyes shining. “You must encourage me in this endeavor.”
    “We will make a Viennese libertine out of you yet!” Freud exulted—but Jung only resumed talking about that wretched man in the lead cellar. He began to speak of other preserved men as well, recently unearthed from the peat bogs in Penmark—all the while methodically cutting his fish to pieces.
    “The acid in the peat tanned and cured the skin. The bodies were flattened by the weight of the earth, and the bones had disintegrated. But the hair, and teeth! The whole face and form of the body, the jewelry on their arms! All, perfectly preserved!”
    “Why are you so concerned with these corpses?” Freud cut in peevishly.
    “Think of the implications. The bodies in the bogs were even older than our friend in the lead cellar. Prehistoric, perhaps. Preserved complete with remnants of their clothing, their totemic burial charms.”
    “Jah, jah —what of it?”
    “Think of what we could learn! Imagine if their brains were as well preserved as their bodies.”
    Freud took a deep draught from his glass of wine to hide his exasperation,