398
PARTISAN REVIEW
All on board died. I have this guilt on my conscience, of being the
murderer of that lawyer. Although he was a crook."
Wilhelm thought, 'I must be a real jerk to sit and listen to s.!lch
impossible stories. I guess I am a sucker for people who talk about the
deeper things of life, even the way he does.'
"We scientific men speak of irrational guilt, Wilhelm," said Dr.
Tamkin, as if Wilhelm were a pupil in his class. "But in such a situa–
tion, because of the money, I wished him harm. I realize it. This isn't
the time to describe all the details, but the money made me guilty.
Money
and Murder both begin with
M.
Machinery. Mischief."
Wilhelm, his mind thinking for him at random, said, "What about
Mercy?
Milk-of-human-kindness?"
"One fact should be clear to you by now. Money-making is ag–
gression. That's the whole thing. The functionalistic explanation is the
only one. People come to the market to kill. They say, 'I'm going to
make a killing.' It's not accidental. Only they haven't got the genuine
courage to kill, and they erect a symbol of it. The money. They make
a killing by a fantasy. Now, counting and numbering is always a sadistic
activity. Like hitting. In the Bible, the Jews wouldn't allow you to count
them. They knew it was sadistic."
"I don't understand what you mean," said Wilhelm. A strange
uneasiness tore at him. The day was growing too warm and his head
felt dim. "What makes them want to kill?"
"By and by, you'll get the drift," Dr. Tamkin assured him. His
amazing eyes had some of the rich dryness of a brown fur. Innumerable
crystalline hairs or spicules of light glittered dryly in their bold surfaces.
"You can't understand without first spending years on the study of the
ultimates of human and animal behavior, the deep chemical, organismic
and spiritual secrets of life. I am a psychological poet."
"If
you're this kind of poet," said Wilhelm, whose fingers in his
pocket were feeling in the little envelopes for the Phenaphen capsules,
"what are you doing in the market?"
"That's a good question. Maybe I am better at speculation because
I don't care. Basically, I don't wish hard enough for money, and there–
fore I come with a cool head to it."
Wilhelm thought, Oh, sure! That's an answer, is it? I bet that
if
I took a strong attitude, he'd back down on everything. He'd grovel in
front of mc.-The way he looks at me on the sly, to see if I'm being
taken in. He swallowed his Phenaphen pill with a long gulp of water.
The rims of his eyes grew red as it went down. And then he felt calmer.
"Let me see if I can give you an answer that will satisfy you," said
Dr. Tamkin. His flapjacks were set before him. He spread the butter
on them, poured on brown maple syrup, quartered them and began to
eat with hard, active muscular jaws which sometimes gave a creak at
the hinges. He pressed the handle of his knife against his chest and
said, "In here, the human bosom-mine, yours, everybody's-there isn't
just one soul. There's a lot of souls. But there are two main ones, the
