The Schopenhauer Cure(19)

And her young daughter? Little noticed by Heinrich, Adele was assigned a minor role in the family drama and was destined to spend her entire life as Johanna Schopenhauer’s amanuensis.

And so the Schopenhauers each went their separate ways.

Father Schopenhauer, heavy with anxiety and despair, lumbered to his death, sixteen years after Arthur’s birth, by climbing to the upper freight window of the Schopenhauer warehouse and leaping into the frigid waters of the Hamburg canal.

Mother Schopenhauer, sprung from her matrimonial trap by Heinrich’s leap, kicked the grime of Hamburg from her shoes and flew like the wind to Weimar, where she quickly created one of Germany’s liveliest literary salons. There she became the dear friend of Goethe and other outstanding men of letters, and authored a dozen best-selling romantic novels, many about women who were forced into unwanted marriages but refused to bear children and continued to long for love.

And young Arthur? Arthur Schopenhauer was to grow up into one of the wisest men who ever lived. And one of the most despairing and life-hating of men, a man who at the age of fifty-five would write:

Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners condemned not to death but to life and as yet all too unconscious of what their sentence means. Nevertheless every man desires to reach old age…a state of life of which it may be said “it is bad today, and every day it will get worse, until the worst of all happens.”





9




* * *



In endless space countless luminous spheres, round each of which some dozen smaller illuminated ones revolve, hot at the core and covered with a cold hard crust on which a mouldy film has produced living and knowing beings—this is…the real, the world.



* * *





Julius’s spacious Pacific Heights home was far grander than any he could now possibly afford to buy: he was one of the lucky millionaires in San Francisco who had the good fortune to buy a house, any house, thirty years earlier. It was his wife, Miriam’s, thirty-thousand-dollar-inheritance money that had made the purchase possible, and, unlike any other investment Julius and Miriam had ever made, the house’s value had rocketed upward. After Miriam’s death, Julius considered selling the house—it was far too large for one person—but instead he moved his office into the first floor of the house.

Four steps led from the street to a landing with a blue-tiled fountain. On the left, a few stairs led to Julius’s office, on the right was a longer stairway to his home. Philip arrived precisely on time. Julius greeted him at the door, escorted him into the office, and gestured toward an auburn leather chair.

“Some coffee or tea?”

But Philip did not look around as he took his seat and, ignoring Julius’s offer, said, “I await your decision about supervision.”

“Ah, once again, straight to the business at hand. I’ve having a difficult time with that decision. Lots of questions. There’s something about your request—a deep contradiction—that puzzles the hell out of me.”

“Undoubtedly, you want to know why I’m asking you for supervision after being so dissatisfied with you as a therapist?”

“Precisely. In exceedingly clear language you claimed that our therapy was a colossal failure, a waste of three years and a great deal of your money.”

“There’s no true contradiction,” Philip replied instantaneously. “One can be a competent therapist and supervisor even though one fails with a particular patient. Research shows that therapy, in any hands, is unsuccessful for about a third of patients. Besides, there’s no doubt I played a significant role in the failure—my stubbornness, my rigidity. Your only error was to choose the wrong type of therapy for me and then persist in it far too long. However, I’m not incognizant of your effort, even your interest, in helping me.”

“Sounds good, Philip. Sounds logical. But still, to ask for supervision from a therapist who gave you nothing in therapy. Dammed if I’d do it—I’d find someone else. I have a feeling that there’s something more, something you’re not saying.”

“Perhaps a modest retraction is in order. It is not entirely accurate to say I got nothing from you. You did make two statements that stuck with me and may have played some instrumental role in my recovery.”

For a moment Julius fumed about having to ask for details. Did Philip think he wouldn’t be interested? Could he be that much of a space cadet? Finally, he gave in and said, “And which two statements?”

“Well, the first statement doesn’t sound like much, but it had some power. I had been telling you about one of my typical evenings—you know, picking up a woman somewhere, taking her to dinner, the seduction scene in my bedroom with the same routine and the same mood music. I remember asking your opinion of my evening and whether you found it distasteful or immoral.”

“I don’t remember my answer.”

“You said you found it neither distasteful nor immoral, only boring. It jolted me to think that I was living a boring, repetitious life.”

“Ah, interesting. So that was one statement. The other?”

“We were discussing tombstone epitaphs. I don’t remember why, but I believe you had raised the question of what epitaph I might select for myself…”