331
SAUL BELLOW
WINKLEMA~:
How to tell the sardine and the piranha apart. Take a
course with Bummidge, one of the great scientific minds of our times.
She's not even pretty. She's got piano legs.
BUMMIDGE:
Layoff, Wink. The girl's given up everything for me. She
was a VIrgm....
WINKLEMAN:
When?
BUMMIDGE:
I swear, she's never known any man but me.
WINKLEMAN :
You
swear! Listen, how much money did you put
in
her
checking account last year? I'll bet it's close to five figures. Furniture,
I know you spent twenty thousand to furnish the love nest. Then you
got her a Thunderbird. Furs, rings. Then you skimped a little on a
watch, and she threw it in your face, right?
BUMMIDGE :
Details, mere details.
WINKLEMAN:
And what's this analysis-to recover your lost youth.
Should I go on?
BUMMIDGE:
What are you talking about? I'm like a kid with her.
Streaming with erotic energy.... Is your mother back from Hawaii?
WINKLEMAN:
You want her for one of your guinea pigs? My eighty–
six-year-old mother
in
the wheel chair? Your aunt? ... Tell me,
Bummy, what's behind all this auto-psychiatry? You're an artful
character.
BUMMIDGE:
Wink. It's on the level. The purpose is insight. Truth.
Life. Human nature and destiny. You've got to break with common
sense if you want to understand. The real desires are unconscious.
You have to study madness, dreams and so-called accidents. Life
is losing out. Death is waiting.
WINKLEMAN:
SO that's why you squander so much dough on this Joyce?
I bet Death is feeling terrible from it.
BUMMIDGE:
You know what I'm beginning to think?
WINKLEMAN:
What?
BUMMIDGE:
My mother gave me too many enemas.
WINKLEMAN:
Mine, too. My heart sank when ... Where're you going?
We haven't solved any of these problems.
BUMMIDGE:
I've got to devote the whole day to therapy. I've got to
give a demonstration, don't forget.
WINKLEMAN:
But Bella....
BUMMIDOE:
A white pig in my dreams. And that's very curious, that I
should have amnesia about kicking her.
WINKLEMAN:
Bummy, you should stick to what you
can
do. Clown.
BUMMIDGE:
Make money, you mean. For that crew of mine....
WINKLEMAN:
Why be so two-faced about dough, Bummy. You know
