SEIZE TH E DAY
385
The doctor said impatiently, "Well these are details, not principles.
Just details which you can leave out. The dog! You're mixing up all
kinds of irrelevant things. Go to a good lawyer."
"But I've already told you, Dad. I got a lawyer, and she got one,
too, and both of them talk and send me bills, and I eat my heart out.
Oh Dad, Dad, what a hole I'm in!" said Wilhelm in utter misery. "The
lawyers, see? draw up an agreement, and she says okay on Monday
and wants more money on Tuesday. And it begins again."
"I always thought she was a strange kind of woman," said Dr.
Adler. He felt that by disliking Margaret from the first and disapprov–
ing of the marriage he had done all that he could be expected to do.
"Strange, Father? I'll show you what she's likr." Wilhelm took
hold of his broad throat with brown-stained fingel and bitten nails
and began to choke himself.
"What are you doing?" cried the old man.
"I'm showing you what she does to me."
"Stop that-stop it!" the old man said and t:lf- .Jed the table com–
mandingly.
"Well, Dad, she hates me. I feel that she's strangling me. I can't
catch my breath. She just has fixed herself on me to kill me. She can
do it at long distance. One of these days I'll be struck down by suf–
focation or apoplexy because of her. I just can't catch my breath."
"Take yoUl hands off your throat, you foolish man," said his
father. "Stop this bunk. Don' t expect me to belie\ e in all kinds of
voodoo."
"If
that's what you want to call it, all right." His face flamed and
paled and swelled and his breath was labOl:ious. "But I'm telling you
that from the time I met her I've been a slave. The Emancipation Proc–
lamation was only for colored people. A husband like me is a slave,
with an iron collar. The churches go up to Albany and supervise the law.
They won't have divorces. The court says, 'You want to be free. Then
you have to work twice as hard-twice, at least! Work! you bum.' So
then guys kill each other for the buck, and they may be free of a wife
who hates them but they are sold to the company. The company knows
a guy has got to have his salary, and takes full advantage of him. Don't
talk to me about being free. A rich man may be free, on an income of
a million net. A poor man may be free because nobody cares what he
does. But a fellow in my position has to sweat it out until he drops
dead."
His father replied to this, "Wilhelm, it's entirely your own fault.
You don't have to allow it."
Stopped in his eloquence, Wilhelm could not speak for a while.
Dumb and incompetent, he struggled for breath and frowned with effort
into his father's face .
"I don't understand your problems," said the old man. "I never
had any like them."
By now Wilhelm had lost his head beyond recovery and he waved
his hands and said over and over, "Oh Dad, don't give me that stuff,
don't give me that. Please don't give me that sort of thing."
