412
PAR TI SAN REVIEW
radishes were like sun and moon and stars; the cream pies were about
a foot thick and the cakes swollen as if sleepers had baked them in
their dreams.
"What'll you have?" said Tamkin.
"Not much. I ate a big breakfast.
I'll
find a table. Bring me some
yogurt and crackers and a cup of tea. I don't want to spend much
time over lunch."
Tamkin said, "You've got to eat."
Finding an empty place at this hour was not easy. The old people
idled and gossiped over their coffee. The elderly ladies were rouged
and mascaraed and hennaed and used blue hair rinse and eye shadow
and wore costume jewelry, and many of them were proud and stared
at you with expressions that did not belong to their age. Were there
no longer any respectable old ladies who knitted and cooked and looked
after their grandchildren? Wilhelm's grandmother had dressed him in
a sailor suit and danced him on her knee, blew on the porridge for
him and said, "Admiral, you must eat." But what was the use of
remembering this so late in the day?
He managed to find a ta:ble and Dr. Tamkin came along with a
tray piled with plates and cups. He had Yankee pot roast, purple
cabbage, potatoes, a big slice of watermelon and two cups of coffee.
Wilhelm could not even swallow his yogurt. His chest pained him still.
At once Tamkin involved him in a lengthy discussion. Did he do
it to stall Wilhelm and prevent him from selling out the rye-or to
recover the ground lost when he had made Wilhelm angry by hints
about the neurotic character? Or did he have no purpose except to talk?
"I think you worry a lot too much about what your wife and your
fa ther will say. Do they matter so much?"
Wilhelm replied, "A person can become tired of looking himself
over and trying to fix himself up. You can spend the entire second
half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half."
"I believe your dad told me he had some money to leave you."
"He probably does have something."
"A lot?"
"Who can tell," said Wilhelm guardedly.
"You ought to think over what you'll do with it."
"I may be too feeble to do anything by the time I get it.
If
I
get anything."
"A thing like this you ought to plan out carefully. Invest it
properly." He began to unfold schemes whereby you bought bonds, and
used the bonds as security to buy something else and thereby earned
twelve per cent safely on your money. Wilhelm failed to follow the
details. Tamkin said,
"If
he made you a gift now, you wouldn't have
to pay the inheritance taxes."
Bitterly, Wilhelm told him, "My father's death blots out all other
considerations from his mind. He forces me to think about it, too. Then
he hates me because he succeeds. When I get desperate-of course I
think about money. But I don't want anything to happen to him. I
certainly don't want him to die." Tamkin's brown eyes glittered
