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wanted to be left in peace. Wilhelm also knew that when he began to
talk about these things he made himself feel worse, he became congested
with them and worked himself into a clutch. Therefore he warned him–
self, 'Layoff, pal. It'll only be an aggravation.' From a deeper source,
however, came other promptings.
If
he didn't keep his troubles before
him, he risked losing them altogether and he knew by experience that
this was worse. And furthermore, he could not succeed in excusing his
father on the ground of old age. No. No he could not. I am his son,
he thought. He is my father. He is as much father as I am son-old
or not. Affirming this, though in complete silence, he sat, and sitting
he kept his father at the table with him.
"Wilky," said the old man, "have you gone down to the baths
here yet?"
"No, Dad, not yet."
"Well, you know the Gloriana has one of the finest pools in New
York. Eighty feet, blue tile. It's a beauty."
Wilhelm had seen it. On the way to the gin game, you passed the
stairway to the pool. He did not care for the odor of the wall-locked
and chlorinated water.
"You ought to investigate the Russian and Turkish baths, and the
sunlamps and massage. I don't hold with sunlamps. But the massage
does a world of good, and there's nothing better than hydrotherapy,
when you come right down to it. Simple water has a calming effect and
would do you more good than all the barbiturates and alcohol in the
world."
Wilhelm reflected that this advice was as far as his father's help
and sympathy would extend.
"I thought," he said, "that the water cure was for lunatics."
The doctor received this as one of his son's jokes and said with a
smile, "Well, it won't turn a sane man into a lunatic. It does a great
deal for me. I couldn't live without my massages and steam."
"You're probably right. I ought to try it one of these days. Yesterday,
late in the afternoon, my head was about to bust and I just had to
have a little air, so I walked around the reservoir, and I sat down
for a while in a playground. It rests me to watch the kids play potsy
and skip-rope."
The doctor said with approval, "Well, now, that's more like the
idea."
"It's the end of the lilacs," said Wilhelm. "When they burn it's
the beginning of summer. At least, in the city. Around the time of
year when the candy stores take down the windows and start to sell
sodas on the sidewalk. But even though I was raised here, Dad, I can't
take city life any more, and I miss the country. There's too much push
here for me. It works me up too much. I take things too hard. I wonder
why you never retired to a quieter place."
The doctor opened his small hand on the table in a gesture so old
and so typical that Wilhelm felt it like an actual touch upon the founda–
tions of his life. "I am a city boy myself, you must remember," Dr. Adler
