39-4
PART I SAN REVIEW
though twisted twice where the ordinary human bone was turned only
once, and his shoulders rose in two pagoda-like points. At mid-body he
was thick. He stood pigeon-toed, a sign perhaps that he was devious
or had much to hide. The skin of his hands was aging, and his nails
were moonless, concave, clawlike, and they appeared loose. His eyes
were as brown as beaver fur and full of strange lines. The two large
brown naked balls looked thoughtful-but were they? And honest–
but this honest expression was not always of the same strength, nor was
Wilhelm convinced that it was completely natural. He felt that Tamkin
tried to make his eyes deliberately conspicuous, with studied art, and that
he brought forth his hypnotic effect by exertion. Occasionally it failed or
drooped, and when this happened the sense of his face passed downward
to his heavy (possibly foolish?) red underlip.
Wilhelm wanted to talk about the lard-holdings, but Dr. Tamkin
said, "This father and son case of mine would be instructive to you.
It's a different psychological type completely than your dad. This man's
father thinks that he isn't his son."
"Why not?"
"Because he has found out something about the mother carrying
on with a friend of the family for twenty-five years."
"Well, what do you know!" said Wilhelm. His silent thought was,
Pure bull. Nothing but bull!
"You must note how interesting the woman is, too. She has two
husbands. Whose are the kids? The fellow detected her and she gave
a signed confession that two of the four children were not the father's."
"It's amazing," said Wilhelm, but he said it in a rather distant
way. He was always hearing such stories from Dr. Tamkin.
If
you were
to believe Tamkin, most of the world was like this. Everybody in the
hotel had a mental disorder, a secret history, a concealed disease. The
wife of Rubin at the newsstand was supposed to be kept by Carl, the
yelling, loud-mouthed gin-rummy player. The wife of Frank in the
barbershop had disappeared with a GI while he was waiting for her
to disembark at the French Lines pier. Everyone was like the faces on
a playing card, upside down either way. Every public figure had a
character neurosis. Maddest of all were the businessmen, the heartless,
flaunting, boisterous business class who ruled this country with their
hard manners and their bold lies and their absurd words that nc-body
could believe. They were crazier than anyone. They spread the plague.
Wilhelm, thinking of the Rojax Corporation, was inclined to agree
about the businessmen. And he supposed that Tamkin, for all his pe–
culiarities, spoke a kind of truth and did a sort of good.
It
confirmed
Wilhelm's suspicions to hear that there was a plague, and he said, " I
couldn't agree with you more. They trade on anything, they steal every–
thing, they're cynical right to the bones while holy as can be to the
outside world."
"You have to realize," said Tamkin, speaking of his patient, or his
client, "that the mother's confession isn't good. It's a confession of
duress. I try to tell the young fellow he shouldn't worry about a phony
confession. But what does it help him if I am rational with him?"
