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not
like
what I have to say. I wouldn’t want to say anything that would
hurt
you.”
    He smiles slightly at this and thinks this girl is bolder than many her age. Was the father right in his surmise? Has she been making things up? He asks, “You like to make things up?”
    “Sometimes, yes. I do like to make up stories. But father is wrong.
I
know the difference between the truth and a lie. Truth is very important to me. I don’t lie the way
he
does,” she says firmly, narrowing her eyes at him. “Mostly it seems to me that no one actually wants you to tell the truth, though they might say they do. It is understood that I should say things that are pleasant and agreeable, things people want to hear,” she says, moving slightly on the sofa, relinquishing her reticule for a moment. She picks up a plump pillow with both her hands, holds it on her lap like a puppy dog, stroking it absently, then positioning it behind her and leaning back. She picks up her reticule and places it on her lap again. “That’s better,” she says. “My leg doesn’t hurt as much. As the day goes on the pain gets worse and worse. I don’t know why.”
    The doctor recalls the numerous hysterical women he has treated for similar symptoms, common among women and even some men. Despite the revered Meynert’s opinion and the origin of the word, the doctor, like Charcot, is certain hysteria exists in both sexes. Has he not known hysterical symptoms himself—shortness of breath, heart palpitations, angina, fainting?
    He has used various methods to cure these symptoms with varying degrees of success over the years: electricity, pressure of the hands, even massage, and finally just obliging the patients to confront a shameful secret from the past, one that is so often hidden even from themselves.
    He has listened for hours with patience, sympathy, and interest, and he has had the humility to learn from his mistakes. But the patients are usually scrupulously polite, overconscientious, arriving on time, often trembling, weeping, begging for his help, sometimes even falling in love with him, throwing their arms around his neck. It is true that this one is being more or less forced back to see him.
    Faced by her silence, he is not quite sure what to say to her. An older or even a younger person would certainly be easier. He is not used to rebellious adolescents and feels he is not quite sure how to deal with this one. He was never a rebellious adolescent himself. He has worked so hard for so much of his life, earnestly aware of the sacrifices his family made for the adored boy, his mother’s golden Siggie, given the privilege of his own
kabinett
, reading Shakespeare at eight, taking his meals alone, his sister’s musical ambitions stifled so that he could study in silence with the only oil lamp, in the scant space of the exiguous apartment, then sent to the university at considerable cost, so that he could pursue his medical studies.
    He has to admit the girl’s concise speaking style is strangely convincing. He wonders how much her symptoms are simply inherited, how much she may be acting, how hysterical she is, after all.
    Intelligent teenage girls are instinctively theatrical, often uttering sentences just to confuse people or to attract attention. It seems difficult to distinguish the acting from reality here, despite her assurances. It will be in her dreams that he will find the truth.
    “Above all, I would like to hear about your dreams,” he tells her. “They will hold the secret to your symptoms.” In the dream, he explains, it is as though the sentinel, the night watchman of our conscious thoughts, can be evaded, and the hidden desires can emerge.
    “I know you are interested in dreams. I am too, though I don’t always remember mine. My father told me you have written a book about them,” she says with a shrewd look in her dark eyes, which again surprises him. His patients rarely bring up his writings.
    He thinks of his new book on