then, was there this whirring, and this persistent hissing? And why hadn’t I heard it from the first, on the day I inspected what was then my still prospective office, thereby preventing me from being bound to such an incompatible neighbor?
These questions (posed to myself with an aggrieved, affronted, indignant air) distracted me from seeing the truth of my situation, which became clear only as I stared at the swirls of the ancient, wear-darkened broadloom that lined the hall. I recalled the first time I had ever heard a sound like the one issuing from Dr. Schussler’s office, which had been many years ago, in the office of one of the many therapists I had had reason to visit during the course of my life. In the waiting area, there had been a small beige plastic machine, placed on the floor, which had given off just such a whir, its role being to blur the clarity of the spoken word that might be audible from the therapeutic offices, thereby preventing anyone, as he waited, from understanding what was being said within (though I myself, still a young man, often tried to overhear, telling myself such curiosity was natural). With great force, the whole period of time surrounding my meetings with the psychotherapist came back to me, and I could see quite clearly the little yellow lamp she kept on a low table beside her, and the vine that covered the single north-facing window, its leaves perpetually trembling.
I did not wish to recall this portion of my life, especially not at the office where I had sought to escape the great black drapery of my nervous condition. Indeed, finding myself tied to such an enterprise seemed to me an evil joke, as I had wagered both my emotional health and my professional reputation against the efficacy of the therapeutic relationship. Over the course of thirty-five years—meeting weekly, twice a week, sometimes daily—I had looked across small rooms into the bewildered, pitiable faces of counselors, therapists, social workers, analysts, and psychiatrists, each inordinately concerned about his or her own professional nomenclature, credentials, theories, accreditations; all of them, in the end, indistinguishable to me. Now, still battling the hooded view of life that had haunted my family for generations, I had come to the conclusion that their well-meaning talking cures, except as applied to the most ordinary of unhappinesses, were useless.
What now could I do to separate myself from this Dora Schussler? How could I escape her analysands with all their fruitless self-examinations, beside whom I was now obligated to spend the remaining eleven months of my lease? I had no legal recourse, I realized. I could not go to the manager and say I had been duped, my neighbor had been hushed, paid off to silence the babblings of her profession on the day I had first surveyed the premises. The situation of my room had not been maliciously misrepresented. I had engaged the office in August, iconic month of the therapeutic hiatus. It was now September. Dr. Dora Schussler, Ph.D. and psychotherapist, was back at work.
2.
Still standing in the hallway, I leapt to an uncharacteristically hopeful thought. I dared believe that the piercing, sibilant voice coming through Dr. Schussler’s door belonged to the current analysand, not to the analyst (as I chose to call them, indiscriminately, since I was not inclined, as I have said, to be impressed by the naming conventions of the psychological professions). I reasoned that if it were the patient whom I had been hearing, all I had to do was be away from the office for one therapeutic hour per week, a mere fifty minutes, and the situation would be tolerable. Somewhat reassured, I went back to my room to wait for the conclusion of the current session and the beginning of the next.
Yet, as the remaining thirty minutes of the session crept by, all manner of alarming thoughts intruded. I shuddered at the consideration that, though the horrid voice might indeed be that of the patient, she (for the voice seemed to me eminently female) might be undergoing a true, orthodox, Freudian analysis, which meant she would be coming to whisper and cluck her problems at me every day of the workweek. It then came to me that the therapist’s name was Dora, the name of Freud’s famous hysteric. Surely, I reasoned (using the absurd, self-defeating logic that always ruled during nervous episodes), Dr. Schussler was a Freudian, the dreadful voice would haunt me daily,