“A prostitute is purchasable.... There is some difference whether one is light-minded through passion or for gain.”
(After a lengthy pause.) “Just what I did find out at the time. Mother was to be had for money. Father was a humble employee, an unsuccessful jurist, who eked out a living doing secretarial service for an attorney. He could not keep up with the large household expenses even though he occasionally transacted a business deal on the side which netted him a considerable sum. Mother always had a friend who took care of our needs. Thus we were brought up rather well educated, my brother could afford to study, we did everything.”
“Did you know all that already as a child?”
“I knew it at a very early age....”
“You think, then, that your sister was also paid and that she sold herself?”
“No, nothing like that. In addition to the paying lover mother always had one, a purely heart affair, on the side. It was funny! The men always brought us candies and all sorts of presents. When we grew older mother became a little more careful. Still, there was enough going on to bring shame as I look back. And so there came into our house also a young lieutenant whom mother had picked up—God knows where. This fellow was mother’s avowed lover and could do as he pleased. The terrible thing was that he began to pursue also sister and after a few jealousy quarrels mother had to put up with it,—she perhaps even encouraged the affair. For I overheard once a talk between them and heard mother reproach ‘Shikki,’—that was the lieutenant’s nickname,—that he had used sister. She could have obtained a large sum of money for the girl because she was a virgin and the girl would have been provided for. Then there followed bitter quarrels between mother and sister.”
I interrupt the conversation at this point. It turns out that she, too, was in love with the lieutenant, and so were the others of the household, including the father and the brother; she was also jealous of her mother. Her jealousy opened her eyes. That is how it happened that she heard the unpleasant rumors about her mother circulating among the neighbors. She began hating her mother, but that continued only for a short time. Then her hatred turned to children. She hated first herself, the child who bore no respect for the mother. She did not want to be like her mother and her sister. She knew that she would have to submit to similar experiences; that her fate was sealed. She strove against her feminine and motherly instincts. But the analysis disclosed that she really entertained one supreme wish which she was unwilling to countenance openly: she wanted to be a mother and to bear many, many children. But the neurotic reaction thwarted her powerful motherly instinct. To be a mother meant identification with the despised mother. Her better feelings prompted her to draw herself far apart from the mother.
She did not want to be a woman. She did not want to be so easy-going as her mother. At that time her brother also showed a temperamental change. He became serious-minded, began to write verses, and to take an interest in all sorts of idealistic endeavors. She linked herself to him and before long she differentiated herself completely from the rest of the household, and particularly from the mother. She sought earnest-minded girl friends and came into frequent contact with her brother’s companions, but was unapproachable, even though she expressed herself freely and frankly about all subjects. Her strongly sensuous temperament threw her next into the arms of the Frenchwoman and she preferred that to a love affair with a man as she was afraid of children. After the Frenchwoman’s breach of loyalty she fell into her depression.
This circumstance also disclosed an interesting sidelight. She confessed to me that the Frenchwoman was also her brother’s sweetheart. It had never been mentioned by the woman but she knew it even before she entered into intimate relations with her. Nevertheless it was her happiest period.
The depression is thus traceable to a second source. The brother had abandoned the Frenchwoman, having chosen another sweetheart, of whom he was very fond and whom he intended to marry. The Frenchwoman was only a sensuous play affair with him, the brother belonged wholly to her. They were always together and she knew all his secrets. She was never jealous when she knew that he kept up relations with some girl or woman so long as he did not love soulfully. But now the brother became acquainted with a wealthy, beautiful girl, with whom he fell in love and whom he was going actually to marry. This, for the brother, lucky event,—came to nothing in the end on account of the opposition of the girl’s family,—left her cool. All she saw was that she was losing her brother, and that he no longer belonged to her. He could not marry the girl because her parents required that he should first prove his ability to support her. But the two lovers agreed to wait for one another and the brother had gone already pretty far and he may yet succeed to marry the girl, despite the mother’s deplorable reputation. He lives no longer with his family and avoids the old home. He only sees her from time to time and they are still good old pals, whenever they meet....