SEIZE THE DAY
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shrewdly at him. "You don't believe It. Maybe it's not psychological. But
on my word of honor. A joke is a joke, but I don't want to joke about
stuff like this. When he dies, I'll be robbed, like. I'll have no more
father."
"You love your old man?"
Wilhelm grasped at this. "Of course, of course I love him. My
father . My mother...." As he said this there was a great pull at the
very center of his soul. When a fish strikes the line, you feel the live
force in your hand . A mysterious being beneath the water, driven by
hunger, has taken the hook and rushes away and fights, writhing.
Wilhelm never identified what struck within him.
It
did not reveal
itself. It got away.
And Tamkin, the confuser of the imagination, began to tell, or
to fabricate, the strange history of
his
father. "He was a great singer,"
he said. "He left us five kids because he fell in love with an opera
soprano. I never held it against him, but admired the way he followed
the life-principle. I wanted to do the same. Because of unhappiness, at
a certain age, the brain starts to die back" (true, true ! thought Wil–
helm) . "Twenty years later I was doing experiments in Eastman Kodak,
Rochester, and I found the old fellow. He had five more children."
(False, false!) "He wept; he was ashamed. I had nothing against him.
I naturally felt strange."
"My dad is something of a stranger to me, too," said Wilhelm,
al~d
he began to muse. Where is the familiar person he used to be? Or
I used to be? Catherine-she won't even talk to me any more, my own
sister. It may not be so much my trouble that Papa turns his back on
as my confusion. It's too much. The ruins of life, and on top of that
confusion, chaos and old night. Is it an easier farewell for Dad if we
don't p:lft friends? He should maybe do it angrily-"Blast you with
my curse!" And why, Wi lhelm further asked, should he or anybody
else pity me; or why should I be pitied sooner than another fellow?
It is my childish mind that thinks people are ready to give it just
because you need it.
Then Wilhelm began to think about his own two sons and to
wonder how he appeared to them, and what they would think of him.
Right now he had an advantage through baseball. When he went to
fetch them, to go to Ebbets Field, though, he was not himself. He put
on a front but he felt as if he had swallowed a fistful of sand. The
strange, familiar house, horribly awkward; the dog, Scissors, rolled over
on his back and barked and whined. Wilhelm acted as if there were
nothing irregular, but a weary heaviness came over him. On the way
to F latbush he would think up anecdotes about old Pigtown and Charlie
Ebbets [or the boys and reminiscences of the old stars, but it was very
heavy going. They did not know how much he cared for them. No. It
hurt him greatly and he blamed Margaret [or turning them against
him. She wanted to ruin him, while she wore the mask of kindness. Up
in Roxbury, he had to go and explain to the priest, who was not
sympathetic. They don't care about individuals, their rules come first.
