Realizations such as this and others, over a long period of years, had placed him—unprotesting on his part—in the position of child (he knew it even better than they did), the child and hero-worshipper to practically everybody he ever met older than himself. Thus it had been easy to give himself up to the foolish psychiatrist, more wholeheartedly, perhaps, than probably any other patient the man had ever had—easy and interesting and pleasant and just what he wanted, at the time. He looked forward to the daily visits, one hour every morning, six days a week, for more than five months altogether. His interest waned after a while, of course, but at first it had been exciting, he had some wonderful things to tell and was eager to tell them, things that he knew would add to and enrich the doctor’s own lore—just as it was always exciting to make a new friend because it meant a new listener; a good while would elapse before he had used up all the frank entertaining and amazing stories about himself; these would sustain the friendship for some time—though he well knew that his interest in the friend and the friendship would dissipate when the stories began to run out. He could almost gauge the length of such a relationship by how much or how little he had revealed of his past.
So it had been with the foolish psychiatrist. But it was more than this that had caused the failure. After a very few weeks, three at the most, he discovered he knew more about the subject, more about pathology, certainly more about himself and what made him tick, than the doctor. What the doctor knew he knew academically, according to rule and case. His own varied experiences in life had taught him nothing about himself and therefore others. These things did not count. Only the grammar and syntax of psychiatry applied. The great catalogue of behavioristics was so complex and complete that everyone fitted in somewhere, a place and a tag could be found for each, regardless of the fact that the elusive bundle of contradictions (like the bundle of nerves) sat there across the desk, whole traits not checking or fitting at all, some of them even canceling out and voiding what did fit and check when considered alone. The human being was lost sight of—certainly the surest way to offend; for the human and the personal was the only thing that counted with Don ever.
And even that was not the cause of their failure. It was ultimately due to that very father-and-child nature of their association which, at the start, had augured so well for success. The doctor carried this relationship to such lengths, refusing finally to allow the patient even to think for himself, that he rebelled. He took to cheating on the doctor, holding out on him, disappearing, drinking and then keeping the secret to himself—a thing he had always been willing and even anxious to confide before. One morning he was presented with a little document which the doctor had drawn up and which he now asked the patient to sign:
April 13th 1936
I hereby acknowledge that I am a pretty good guy when I am sober but that when I am tight I am not responsible for what I do or say. I know that I must be very bad when I am tight from what my best friends tell me. In order therefore not to become a nuisance when I am tight I should like to make the following agreement.
If I feel the urge to drink, and am able to control this urge enough to go home and in the presence of my brother or doctor drink 6 bottles of beer, I agree that I shall then remain in my house two days. If, on the other hand I am not able to control myself in this manner and I feel myself forced to drink whiskey or more than two beers without consulting my doctor, I agree that I must spend seven days the first time this experience happens, 8 days the second time, nine days the 3rd time, etc. in my house. I must spend the full time arranged for in my house except for two hours from 10:45 to 12:45 during which time I shall visit my doctor and get fresh air.
Furthermore I agree that if under the influence of alcohol I fail to cooperate in this agreement I must be forced to cooperate by any measures my doctor finds necessary. I wish this agreement to hold until I and my doctor decide it should be dissolved.
It had been dissolved then and there (and the swell fee with it). Childish he was, but not that childish—nor so foolish as the foolish psychiatrist. He could certainly not agree to such an agreement. The object, of course, was to make the ultimate punishment for each successive misstep so severe that a mighty taboo would be built up about misstepping at all. But punishment would do no good, no matter how severe. He knew better than to sign such a document because he knew he couldn’t keep the promise, and he wouldn’t sign it and then not keep it. It was simply a case, again, of knowing himself better than the doctor. He would make verbal promises fifty times over and break them right and left, but he would never actually swear to a thing and then sign his name to it unless he meant to abide by it; and he knew that to abide by this was impossible. He might mean it now and not mean it tomorrow; and knowing this was so, he couldn’t honestly put his name to such a pledge. Yes, it was honesty, of a sort; but it was also a wariness and apprehension of being trapped. It gave his brother as well as the doctor too great a weapon. To sign and then fail would be to lay himself open to such charges of trickery and deceit as had never been brought against him yet. Apart from his refusal to use the key to the applejack closet, his denial of this document was about the only thing he could cite to his credit in the past half-dozen years.
That winter at the farm a strange thing had happened, revealing something about his nature that surprised even himself. The applejack closet, off the caretakers’ bedroom next to his own, became the object of his constant watch. He hung about his room and literally laid in wait for the door to be left ajar or unlocked. Several times a morning, again in the afternoon, when Mr. and Mrs. Hansen were downstairs in the kitchen or somewhere about the farm, he would tiptoe into their bedroom, listening anxiously for a step in the hall, try the door, find it locked, and tiptoe out again. They knew what was going on, of course, and he knew that they knew, but no one ever mentioned it. They knew because of what was in the closet and because they knew him. Their bedroom closet was the place where the applejack was kept, several kegs of it; the Hansens each had a key, and were careful to lock the door after they had been in to take some clothes out or hang something away; they kept their keys about their persons always—he had never even seen them, but he knew only too well that such keys existed. Only twice that winter had the door been carelessly left unlocked, and in the space of a few minutes he had got in and siphoned off six or seven pints of the strong brandy-like applejack and hidden them in secret places about his room. When the row began between the Hansens as to which of them had left the closet-door unlocked, he was already drunk.… But a day came when he was handed the key on a silver platter, as it were. He had been away, spending the Easter holidays with Wick in New York. Almost the first thing he noticed on getting back to the farm was that one of the keys was missing. Several times a day he heard Mrs. Hansen shouting for her husband: she wanted to get into the closet; and Mr. Hansen would have to drop what he was doing, fish out his key, curse her for her carelessness, and yell after her as she departed for the upstairs, “You bring it right back again, too!” He could not help smiling over these scenes because he knew he was the cause of them, but he pretended not to notice the confusion, the unnecessary running back and forth, the shouting, and the anger. Some nights later, intending to read in bed, he got out his camel’s-hair bed-jacket and put it on. He noticed a bulge in the left pocket. He reached in and found a wad of used Kleenex—in his absence Mrs. Hansen had been wearing his jacket. And there too was the key.… He did not leave the farm, then, till June; but in all that time he did not use the key, either. Why, he could not have said; except, perhaps, that it would have been too easy. Saturday nights when Mr. and Mrs. Hansen went in town to the movies, he could have used the key at his leisure and siphoned off every pint of applejack in the place—he could have; but he could not. It wouldn’t have left a trace of guilt behind, it would have been taking such an easy advantage. He’d sooner have broken the door down, got at the liquor that way; and once, when they were away on such an evening, he even went so far as to get
a ladder from the barn, raise it to the little window of the closet, climb in and help himself. When the Hansens returned from town and found the ladder against the house, they knew without going to his room that he was drunk.… Though he couldn’t bring himself to use it, he had no intention of giving up the key. They had lost it; very well, let them pay for it. He even enjoyed, now, the scenes this caused between them (always out of his presence and supposedly beyond his hearing): the fits of temper, the distracted running up and downstairs, the times without number Mrs. Hansen started for the closet and then remembered that she’d have to go all the way out to the chicken-coop and find her husband before she could get in. Reading in his room he would listen to all this. He would hear Mrs. Hansen throw open the window of her bedroom and call “Jake! I want to get in the closet!” Mr. Hansen could be heard hollering from way across the field: “Come and get it then! You lost it!” Neither now mentioned the object by name, they didn’t need to, it was only too much on all their minds.… No, he had no intention of giving it up till the day he left. That morning, he planned to tell them when he was at breakfast. As the moment approached, he began to get so nervous that his hands shook—he couldn’t have said why. His throat was parched and he had twice to run upstairs to the bathroom, as if he had been taken with a kind of stage-fright. The tension and suspense of all the long weeks leading up to this moment had become almost too much for him, but he intended to go through with it all the same. He called the Hansens in from the kitchen. He swallowed some coffee, then drew the key from his pocket and laid it on the tablecloth. They stared at him, Mr. Hansen with mouth open. He put his hands in his lap under the table and clasped them together to keep them from shaking. “Now listen,” he said, “I’ve never used this key once since I’ve had it. Never once. I’ve had it since Easter. I found it in the pocket of my bed-jacket.” Mr. Hansen hit the ceiling in a rage; but Mrs. Hansen, to his relief, turned her head away to hide a smile.…
This kind of honor had baffled the foolish psychiatrist, as it had baffled many another before, from his mother on. But could it, by any stretch of ethics, be called honor at all? Or was it honor so honest that it transcended the human, so human that it had not been characterized by the convenient words in the catalogue? They were both at sea to understand; but the one didn’t care: the story itself was the thing, not the explanation; and the other withdrew still further from the baffling bundle of contradictions that spoke so articulately for itself, at once so completely objective (and just as completely subjective) that he had nothing and everything to work with. It was an embarrassment of riches that vanished as it appeared. The material at hand slipped through his fingers even as he held out his palm—and came up behind his back to hit him over the head. At such times Don waited politely for the other to recover himself, his mind already delving further back into the past in search of another episode to entertain and instruct them both.
Why was the patient here at all, what did the doctor have to offer, what was the nature of the trouble and what was the cure? Why did they never get at the root of the matter, the thing that drove him to do what he did, the thing that drove him to drink? But what was the good of the knowledge?—since no one, certainly not himself, knew the origin or nature of the secret pain which impelled him blindly, if by such roundabout ways, to self-destruction: the fears which he could never bring himself to face and which receded into blank when he got the drinks under his belt. You could name them and they were still not named. Face them and they vanished—to sneak back during an unguarded moment and hit you over the head, too, knocking you out completely. The never accomplishing anything, the continual failure, the failing even to try, the disgust of friends and family, the loss of reputation—the only loss ever, the one robbery. Who steals my purse steals trash.… But he that filches from me my good name—And who was doing that for him, who but himself?
He sat up. In an instant he was off the bed. He all but crouched, as if a voice had thundered at him and startled his already jangling nerves. Who steals my purse— Fear hit him, not merely (now) the thought of fear or remembrance of fear. The foggy memory that clouded the events of the evening before, the events he had not even troubled himself to think of, suddenly cleared.
He had to get out of here. He looked at the clock and found it was twenty minutes to eight. Bars opened at eight, if the bartender was on time. And could sell liquor from eight o’clock on, if the guy was on time. Liquor stores didn’t open till nine but to hell with that now. Twenty minutes to go. He began to walk around the apartment, went into the bedroom and kitchen, came back and put on his shoes, hurried to the bathroom to button his collar and pull up his tie again. But why hurry. Twenty minutes took a hell of a while, he could do a million things in twenty minutes, chances are an hour later it would still be twenty to eight.
He sat down, breathing heavily. What in Christ’s name was he ever going to do now? To visit Jack’s for the entire rest of his life, of course, was simply out of the question; but that didn’t matter, either. He didn’t need to go to Jack’s. But how could he ever pass through Charles Street again, how could he go anywhere near Sheridan Square or even down to the Village—ever? But that didn’t matter, either. He didn’t need to go to the Village. He could stay uptown for the rest of his days. Could? He’d have to.
Suppose he should meet somebody who had been at Jack’s last night. Suppose somebody he knew had been there and he hadn’t noticed—and the other one had. What about M. Mc. and her tweed friend. The people at the bar downstairs. The plank-shouldered football players. Dannie or Billy or Jimmie or Hughie. The taxi-drivers out in front. He might meet them, he might run into any one of them some day, maybe they even knew someone he knew. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility, it was a small world. Hadn’t it been beyond possibility, beyond thought, that he—yes, even he—would ever sink so low as to steal a woman’s purse? Would anybody ever have believed that? Would he himself? The stealing or the attempt to steal was bad enough; the being caught was worse. To expose yourself as a common thief before a whole bar full of people—
He went into the bathroom again, loosened his collar and tie, and began to shave. One thing they could never say about him: he was never not neat. He never let himself go to that extent. He still had some pride and self-respect left. But what good did it do him? Control was gradually slipping away. Who knew what he might not do next? I’ve got to watch myself, I’ve certainly got to watch myself; no telling what undreamed-of fantastic thing he might catch himself doing next. Catch himself? If he could only be sure of that! But last night it had gone so far that others had caught him first.
There was no sense in going down now and cooling your heels in front of a bar that hadn’t opened yet. Stand there leaning against the door, looking at the clock inside, while other people hurried past you to work. He hadn’t sunk that low, either. Or maybe this clock here this God-damned Dutchman’s little clock was slow. He went into the bedroom and sat down at the desk and picked up the ’phone and dialed ME-7-1212. He listened breathless to the breathless voice, with the oddly questioning lift at the end: “When yew hear the sig-nal, the tie-yum will be seven-fifty-fie-yuv and thrrree-quar-ters.” He did not wait for the signal, he said “Thank you” automatically and hung up. Fool! he said as he went for his coat. Why the hell did I thank her, she can’t hear me.…
He found his coat and vest lying in a heap on the floor at the end of the couch. He went through the pockets. He fished out all the money and spread it on the table and counted it. My God there was twenty-six dollars and something. Talk about windfalls. Today of all days!
He did not go to Sam’s place. Not because Gloria would be there (because she wouldn’t, she didn’t come till noon). But he wanted to start off someplace else, today. Maybe Sam’s later. He went to a little bar-and-grill just below 55th and thank Christ the bartender was on time.
“Rye, please.”
The bartender looked at him. “Double?”
He checked an impu
lse to draw himself up. “No!” Where had the guy got that idea? He ought to be put in his place. Just because you came around at eight-something in the morning, did that necessarily mean—? They were open for business, weren’t they? Well, then?
He ignored the drink for a minute or two. He picked up a News that was lying on the counter, folded back at the editorial page. He scanned The Inquiring Fotographer column: “Do you sleep raw at night or do you wear pajamas?” He glanced at a cartoon called The Family—somebody’s idea of an aristocratic middle-aged couple discussing politics in language never heard on land or sea. He reached for the glass, looked at it critically a moment, then drank.
He ordered another and faced the mirror. There was no sense in working himself into a fright, all because of something that had happened last night when he wasn’t responsible, wasn’t himself—something that hadn’t turned out disastrously, after all. Not as bad as it might have. But it was a warning, a dangersignal, one of the sharpest he had yet met up with. In spite of his trying to rationalize the whole episode of last night and his fear today, a sinking sensation plunged down through his breast again and again, his body began to get hot all over, his palms sweated: it was shame.
He drank the second drink in one swallow, and a third, and in a moment or two he felt better. Now he could begin to take it easier, why not, he had the whole day ahead of him, several days, there was money in his pocket, plenty money—really, come to think of it, he hadn’t a care in the world. Absurd silly cheating little glasses; thick; all run to fat, as it were. All bottom. You could probably pour the contents into a thimble. Surely a dozen of these wouldn’t be the equivalent of the kind he drank from at home.
The Lost Weekend Page 7