One night, I returned rather late after a meal with a colleague, and as I approached the house, I noticed that a shutter on the middle window of the garden apartment had swung open. A light was on, and I saw Miranda seated behind a table in the front room. She was wearing a bathrobe that had fallen open at the neck, and I saw the curve of her breasts as she leaned over a large piece of paper, her hand moving as she drew. Beside her were scissors, pens, inkpots, and chalk. At first I thought she was working on a book design, but when I glanced down, I saw a large female figure with a gaping mouth and sharp teeth like a wolf’s. There were other figures, too, smaller ones, but I couldn’t identify them. Afraid she would catch me spying, I walked on, but that momentary view of the bestial woman remained with me. That evening, I recalled the first time I saw Los Caprichos and how the pictures had made me queasy as I shuttled between fascination and repulsion. The single glimpse of Miranda’s picture made me think of Goya and of monsters in general. What’s frightening is not their strangeness, but their familiarity. We recognize the forms, both human and animal, that have been twisted, contorted, elongated, or mingled together until we can’t say they’re one thing or the other. Monsters burst the categories. I went to sleep thinking of Mr. T., my old patient, who had been occupied by the jangling voices of the famous and infamous dead, male and female, and of poor Daniel Paul Schreber, whom Freud wrote about after reading the man’s memoir. Tortured by supernatural rays that were tied to celestial bodies, Schreber suffered from “bellowing miracles” and “nerves of voluptuousness” that were filling him from head to toe and slowly turning him into a woman.

WHEN SHE WAS little, my sister had spells. Her eyes would become unfocused and then, for an instant, she would lose herself. Only once did it last long enough to frighten me. We were playing in the woods behind our house. I was the pirate who had captured her and tied her with imaginary ropes to a tree while she begged for her life. Just as I was relenting and about to invite her to become a girl pirate, she opened her mouth to speak and stopped abruptly. I saw her eyelids flutter strangely as a thin line of saliva trickled from her bottom lip. The sunlight caught the string of spit, and it gleamed like silver as I looked at her. I remember that there was some motion in the leaves above us and that I could hear the noise of the water from the creek, but otherwise everything seemed to have stopped with Inga. I don’t know how long it went on, only seconds, but those seven or eight beats of waiting and watching terrified me. I imagined the game had somehow hurt her, that my villain fantasy had paralyzed my sister. After an unendurable pause, I howled her name and threw myself into her arms. All at once, she was comforting me. “Erik, are you all right? Are you hurt?”