Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

"Sorry. I'm Roy Basch, how are you today?"

"You should be," she said. "It's diagnostic."

"Of what?"

"How the hell do / know? When he finds you a therapist, you'll find out."

"No, no, I'm not a patient, I'm on the opposing team, the doctors?"

"Big deal. Carriage house. He's there."

Since my one talk with Schlomo about Cherokee, I hadn't gone to see him again. I knew that my avoiding him had

something to do with my loyalty to my patient Cherokee. Schlomo had taken over from Ike White as Director of Residency Training, and he seemed to be everywhere at once around Misery, constantly running outpatient groups, giving lectures, eating those bananas, wandering the grounds as if he had all the time in the world. He saw most of his private patients here at his home office, starting with Lily Putnam at six in the morning. I'd often come upon him schmoozing with one of what he referred to as "the Great Unwashed," sometimes Buildings and Grounds, more often, as he noshed on some horrible dish, Cafeteria. Solini and I had nicknamed him "the Oily Schmoozer of Misery."

Ike White's colossal lie, his suicide and its colossal denial, had cracked open something cynical in me, leaving me with a deep sense that you couldn't believe much of anything you were told at Misery. While I had settled into a healthy respect for just how possible it was that a shrink could be screwing his patients, every time I would run into Schlomo in the flesh it seemed absurd. Blair Heiler, with those long fingers and boyish smiles, yes. Schlomo no. Schlomo had noticed my avoiding him, and whenever I'd run into him, he would badger me to come see him for supervision. "You never call," he'd say, mimicking a Jewish grandmother, "you never write, not even a postal cart!" Finally one day he'd cornered me at the vending machines in the tunnels. "Look, I got duties too, as Residency director. Make nice. We'll meet outside this goyish country club. Come to the house." He reached into a horrible inner pocket and handed me a map. We set a time.

I walked down the path to the carriage house and sat in the waiting room. An obese man dressed in a light gray jumpsuit came ponderously down the stairs and into the room, weeping as if his heart would crack. He clomped past me, cowlike, and out the door. Schlomo yelled for me to come up.

The second floor of the carriage house was a large open room under a mansard roof, one whole side of which was skylight. In the light Schlomo looked worse, in shirtsleeves, baggy slacks, his chin grizzled, and his eyes, deep in there, red-edged as if from lack of sleep. As in his office at Misery, here was a leather couch and in back of it a leather chair, and a tidy desk and other chairs. The decor was fragrant plants and bananas in all stages of ripeness. Here at home the cigar in his mouth

was lit. He puffed happily. In his hand was that yellow plastic watering can with the penile spout.

" 'Enter to Grow in Wisdom!' " he shouted joyously. "Inscription over the Harvard Gate."

"Throw that in my lap again," I said, "and I'll kill you."

"Deal. Sit, sit. Sit." He gestured me to a chair in front of a desk. "Y'look good. Things agreeing?"

"Fine, fine," I said, realizing that suddenly my mind was spinning with questions and fantasies about his patient Lily Putnam.

"Good, good. So why don't you ever come to see Schlomo for supervision?"

"Just because you're now director of training doesn't mean I have to subject myself to you."

'Training's for horses or seals, boychik, not for persons. Why so nasty?"

"So what do you want?"

"Schmooze. Just to schmooze. Outrage, remember? I got it, you got it, the goys don't got it. So how's it goin'? Tell Schlomo."

He waited, smiling, puffing. I thought of the drowned kid. Finally I told him something of what I'd been going through, with Heiler.

"Oy gevalt!" he said. "That's it! That's why you're so nasty lately-you've been Heilerized! All that borderline crap. Little Blairey Heiler! The putz. Yeah, he's like you. Never came to Schlomo, never analyzed. Anger? Oy!"

"You're saying that anger's not important?" I said angrily.

"Fifty years ago he'd be gassing you and me and laughing. Never mind him, c'mon c'mon, let's go deep. What's doin' in there? Tell Schlomo."

"Nothing."

"Oh boy!" he said, delighted. "C'mon. Spill."

Those eyes waited, glittering dark crystals. I checked out the watering can, and then glanced away at the couch. Schlomo had been Ike's analyst. Six years, Ike had lain on that couch. I could almost see him, stuttering there, hoping it would help. "You were Ike White's analyst?"

For a second he seemed startled. Then he sighed, puffed his cigar to a rose red, and said, "Yes. His first one. Poor Isaac."

I remembered that Ike's "new" analyst had been at his bed-

side when he died. "Why'd he need a second one? Didn't the one with you take?"

"You have feelings about him?" That ugly face softened, the eyes kindled.

"Not really."

"Tell Schlomo," he cooed, "tell Schlomo about sad and lonely."

"Nope. No feelings. Gone."

Schlomo nodded his head slowly and then abruptly threw the lit cigar into my lap. Sparks flew. I jumped up and threw it back at him, brushing my pants frantically. The ash had stained the fabric, bits were burning through.

"Asshole!" I screamed. "You ruined my suit! Three fifty in Oxford and you ruined my suit! Are you crazy? Are you a fucking imbecileT'

"I know, I know, it's terrible. Here-" He was heading toward me with the watering can. "-hold still, I'll put it out-"

"No! Stay away, you jerk!"

"Send the bill, send the bill." He sighed. "No feeling, eh?"

I was enraged. But then something strange happened. All at once Schlomo seemed to crumple and half fall to the floor, where he sat cross-legged, as if at a dying campfire. He started crying softly.

"What?" I asked. That repulsive body shook. "What happened?"

"Isaac, poor Isaac." He chanted a riff of Hebrew, then translated, " Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to Mount Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering.' " He sighed. "Six years. Good work. Boom. Dead. Suicide."

"Suicide?"

"You believe these pinheaded goyim with eyes so close together you can't get a pencil between? These Lloyals and Heilers who think their colons are filled with cologne?" He fell silent, rocking a little, in grief.

"I met with him the day he did it," I said. "It was the day Cherokee told me about his suspicion about you and his wife. I keep thinking that, maybe, just maybe, that was the final straw."

"Nah. I called Isaac later that day, after you came to see me. It was okay. You didn't do it. Poor little guy."

"Why did he kill himself T

"Because of this," he said, looking up at me with a pitiable sorrow.

"Because you were always throwing things into his crotch?"

Schlomo sat up, even bounced. His eyes widened, black buttons in pink cloth. "And because he maybe never got as angry as you? See? You got it."

"Got what?"

"Get more of it-make nice with Schlomo. Gimme a hand up." I did. His hand was damp. "So," he said, again cheerful, "come for supervision, come kibitz. Better yet, let Schlomo analyze you. I'll give you such a deal!"

"Me, analyzed by you? I don't think so!"

"Nu, so I won't analyze. I'll farm you out"

"I don't want any part of you," I said. "Life's too short for Schlomo."

"And Schlomo's too short for life!" He laughed. As I walked out, he called down the stairs after me, "Bye-bye, bye-bye. Don't forget to write!"

I walked up the flagstone path and stopped to see the damage to my pants in the slanting October light. Two burn holes. The fucker would get the bill. Looking up, I saw the pool, the blue not of water but of paint. It was empty. Shit. I walked on again to my car, and as I drove away on down the Ml, I started to put the fragments together, as if my brain, unrolled, were rolling back up convolution by convolution, gyri and sulci snapping back into place to make some sense of this phantasmagorical shrink. The bizarre thing about Schlomo was that his outrageousness left no room for pretense. He seemed real, but it was a reality like everybody's Uncle Irving, the schnorrer at the cousin's wedding who was funny but turned out to have been embezzling from the business for thirty years. It was real, but was it true? Fuck Schlomo! Stay away. In the jungle of the Doves, you see a snake, you don't grab it.