Misanthropological psychology

Felicia liked the Mozart Café on Reichsgasse.  It had high windows that poured the afternoon sunlight across the black-and-white chessboard tiled floor, marble topped tables with a single, pedestal-style brass leg ornately curved and twisted to look like a gnarled tree-trunk, and a long, brass-railed counter where the employees served excellent coffee and not-quite-so-excellent cakes.  The employees wore anachronistic starched white aprons over pristine white shirts and black trousers and all seemed to have been taught to smile in the exact same way.  They stayed behind the counter, with the collection of empty cups and crumb-strewn plates handed to a middle-aged woman with a tied-back bun of greying hair and bright, darting eyes who rattled a tiny steel cart back and forth as she cleaned tables and reset expectations.  A separate cadre of waitstaff took orders and delivered them.

Cordelia, who arrived a mere thirty seconds later than Felicia, made a tiny moue when she saw that Felicia had taken the bench-seat leaving her with the high-backed wooden chair and her back to the counter.

“First come, first served,” said Felicia calmly.  She checked her watch.  “I was actually forty seconds late, myself.”

Cordelia waved a white-gloved hand as though fending off a wasp at a picnic.  “I said nothing,” she said.  “Though it wasn’t my fault.  At the metro there was an—“ she paused, clearly choosing her words, “—inconvenient woman holding up passage through the gates with her two children and her pushchair.  Instead of herding them through a gate ahead of her she’d given them their tickets to make their own way through while she wrestled with the pushchair.  So when the chair got stuck and the children mangled their tickets she held up the entire queue for whole minutes!”

Felicia nodded, waiting.  After a pause just barely long enough to allow Felicia to attempt to interrupt, Cordelia continued, “Obviously, since I was forced to be there and observe, I considered the likely psychological drive.”

“Of course,” said Felicia, who would have done exactly the same thing.

“I think it’s safe to infer that the woman intended this outcome,” said Cordelia.  “I mean, a normal person wouldn’t entrust getting through a metro gate to a four-year-old, let alone make them responsible for their younger sister as well.”

“I concur,” said Felicia, thinking this through and deciding that it sounded reasonable.  In her experience, which was limited as she felt that children were entirely other peoples’ problem, she had found children to be obstruent and obstreperous and largely incapable of holding a sensible conversation.

“So she deliberately acted to block the gates, and then used the pushchair to obstruct another.  This is an act of base misanthropy, which by itself would be unremarkable,” said Cordelia, warming to her thesis.  A waiter hovered at her elbow, order-pad at the ready and a pencil held delicately aloft.

“Coffee, thank-you,” said Felicia. “And… do you have any Dobostorte?  Then perhaps a half-slice, please.”

“Coffee also, no milk,” said Cordelia sparing the waiter a single glance.  “And something autumnal I think… perhaps a Bavarian cream?”

The waiter departed in a white-noise crackle of starched cloth and the sudden movement of air brought a breath of brewing coffee across their table.  Both women sniffed and smiled briefly.

“As I was saying,” said Cordelia.  “That by itself would be unremarkable but when the gate-guard attempted to help her things changed.  When the guard ushered the small child and its sister through she called them back, creating a problem as their tickets were now not only mangled but also expired.  When the gate-guard attempted to take the pushchair so as to extricate the woman from the worst of her predicament she shouted at him so volubly that we all took a step back.  Which, and I’m not sure this is a coincidence, caused an elderly man to stumble and fall down the escalator to the metro lines.  When the gate-guard turned to assist the fallen man the woman fell dramatically herself, barely keeping the pushchair above her head and from hitting the smallest of her children.”

“This is quite extraordinary,” said Felicia, intrigued despite herself.  “This woman seems like she demands attention.  A narcissist, perhaps?”

Cordelia nodded.  “That was my initial assessment too,” she said.  “I mean, it’s obviously only a first-glance and would need proper case-work to substantiate, but you can’t help but feel that the whole situation was largely her own fault and that when someone else was involved, however inadvertently, she immediately tried to bring the attention back to herself.  But….”

The waiter set the two cups of coffee down with the faintest chink of china against marble and disappeared again to bring the pastries separately.  Felicia tasted her coffee and permitted herself another smile.  “But?”

“The gate-guard returned their attention to the woman and her children,” said Cordelia.  She twisted her cup on its saucer, making a tiny creaking noise, but didn’t drink from it.  “And two other people started down the escalator to help the elderly man.  I stayed where I was, in part out of fascination with this scene, and in part because there were at least three rows of people between me and the escalators.”

“And in part because if you arrived here later than me you would have to take the chair rather than the bench,” said Felicia.  The waiter set her Dobostorte in front of her, accompanied with a starched napkin monogrammed with an M for Mozart, and set the Bavarian Cream in front of Cordelia.  “Don’t glare at me, you know it’s true.”

“You make me sound like a monster,” said Cordelia.  She unwrapped her spoon from her napkin and sampled the cream.  “This is still the best in the city,” she said.  “Anyway, when the woman realised that people were attempting to help the elderly man she started screaming that her leg was trapped and she needed medical aid.  That puzzled the guard, and to be honest myself, as we could both clearly see that it wasn’t, and she didn’t.”

Felicia’s mouth was full of Dobostorte so she widened her eyes a little and nodded at Cordelia.

“That’s when I started thinking,” said Cordelia.  “As the crowd regathered around the woman, probably hoping for some ghoulish spectacle, I realised that this couldn’t be simple narcissism.  This was planned and deliberate, and she had contingency plans if she wasn’t getting the attention she desired.  This was misanthropological psychology.”

“In the wild?”  Felicia was so startled that she forgot she was eating, and tiny crumbs of cake scattered over the table.  “I’m so sorry!”  She dabbed at the crumbs with her napkin, sweeping them up.

“Indeed!”

“But… you can’t confirm it, though,” said Felicia.  “Can you?”

“I lifted my phone,” said Cordelia, “and acted as though I was streaming the scene onto Tiktok, or Tactics, or whatever that app is that’s so popular with my teenage clients.”

“Facebook?” said Felicia who didn’t take clients under the age of thirty.

“I think it’s Chinese,” said Cordelia.  “But anyway, I did that, and all of a sudden the woman was shrieking and screaming and I think she even managed to cut herself on the pushchair a little.  But it confirmed to me that this was misanthropological psychology in the wild.”

“I see.”  Felicia set her fork down and reached for her coffee.  “This means that Dr Fraud’s theories are taking on a life of their own, doesn’t it?”

“It definitely means a lot more work for us,” said Cordelia.