388
PARTISAN REVIEW
and recover my balance? You·re never the same afterwards. Trouble
rusts out the system.
"You really
want
a divorce?" said the old man.
"For the price I pay I should be getting what I ask."
"In that case," Dr. Adler said, "it seems to me no normal person
would stand for such treatment from a woman."
"Ah, Father, Father !" said Wilhelm. "It's always the same deal
with you. Look how you lead me on. You always start out to help me
with my problems, and be sympathetic and so forth.
It
gets my hopes up
and I begin to be grateful. But before we're through I'm a hundred times
more depressed than before. Why is that? You don't have sympathy.
You want to shift all the blamc on to mc. Maybe you're wise to do
it ..." Wilhelm was beginning to lose himself. "All you seem to think
about is your dcath. Well I'm sorry. But I'm going to die too. And I'm
your son. It isn't my fault in the first place. There ought to be a right
way to do this, and be fair to each other. But what I want to know is why
do you start up with me if you're not going to help me? What do you
want to know about my problems for, Father? So you can lay the whole
responsibility on me-so that you won't have to help me? Do you want
me to comfort you for having such a son?" Wilhelm had a great !mot of
wrong tied tight within his chest, and tears approached his eyes but
he didn't let them out. He looked shabby enough as it was. His voice was
thick and hazy, and he was stammering and could not bring his awful
feelings forth.
"You have some purpose of your own," said the doctor, "in acting so
unreasonable. What do you want from me? What do you cxpect?"
"What do I expect?" said Wilhelm. He felt as though he were
unable to recover something. Like a ball in the surf, washed beyond
reach, his self-control was going out. "I expect
hel/)!"
The word cseaped
him in a loud, wild, frantic cry and startled the old man, and two or
three breakfasters within hearing glanccd thcir way. Wilhelm's hair,
the color of whitened honey, rose dense and tall with the expansion of
his face, and he said, "When I suffer...you aren't even sorry. That's
becau se you have no affection for me, and you don't want any part of
me."
"Why must I like the way you behave? No, I don't like it," said
Dr. Adler.
"All right. You want me to change myself. But suppose I could
do it-what would I become? What could
I?
Let's suppose that all my
life I have haa the wrong ideas about myself and wasn't what I thought
I was. And wasn't even careful to take a few precautions, as most people
do . . . like a woodchuck has a few exits to his tunnel. But what shall I do
now? More than half my life is over. It's more than half. And now you
tell me I'm not even normal."
The old man too had lost his calm. "You talk about being helped,"
he said. "When you thought you had to go into the service I sent a check
to Margaret every month. As a family man you could have had an ex–
emption. But no! The war couldn't be fought without you and you had
