Batman's interruption carried neither anger nor urgency. It seemed he was merely saying that he understood.
"Whom have you lost?" Schiller asked.
"My child. What about you?"
"Perhaps my mother." Schiller gave an ambiguous answer. "She was my nurse."
"Corresponding to that Doctor?"
"Yes."
Schiller then offered some explanation. "It's remarkable, but fatherly love and motherly love are two entirely different things. Neither can be absent. If there is only one, imbalance is merely a matter of time. The same is true in fantasies."
Batman seemed to sink into thought, and Schiller said nothing more. The two sat facing each other by the window in silence, but it was quite obvious that they seemed to have deepened their understanding of one another.
This tranquil atmosphere was indeed surprising. They had only known each other for two days, after all. Such familiarity clearly should not have been enough to keep a silence in conversation from becoming awkward.
Schiller drank the wine sip by sip. Before long, his glass was empty, but he had no intention of pouring more. He set the glass down, rose from his seat, and left. Batman remained where he was and did not even look at him.
Schiller sat in the middle of the large sofa at the center of the room, opened the laptop on the table, and began tapping lightly on the keyboard. Only then did Batman turn to look at him. "Are you writing clinical notes?"
"No, a paper."
The two fell silent again. Batman seemed to simply believe Schiller's explanation, or perhaps he had some way of seeing what was on the computer screen. More than ten minutes passed before Batman asked, "About psychology?"
"The American Journal of Psychiatry."
Then came another long silence. Only the clatter of the keyboard echoed through the