Walker Percy - The Last Gentleman

At five o’clock, the Southerner’s hour, the office smelled of the accumulated misery of the day, an ozone of malcontent which stung the eyes like a Lionel train. Some years ago the room had been done in a Bahama theme, with a fiber rug and prints of hummingbirds and Negresses walking with baskets on their heads, but the rug had hardened and curled up at the corners like old skin. Balls of fluff drifted under the rattan table.

“I — suggest — that if it is all right with you—” began Dr. Gamow, jotting a note on a smooth yellow pad with a gold pencil (this is all you really need to set your life in order, the patient was thinking, a good pad and pencil), “—we’ll change Monday from five to five thirty. How is that for you, bad, eh?”

“No, it’s not bad at all.”

Dr. Gamow pricked up his ears. “Did you say mad?”

“No, I believe I said bad: it’s not bad at all.”

“It seemed to me that at first you said mad.”

“It’s possible,” said the agreeable patient.

“I can’t help wondering,” said Dr. Gamow shyly, “who is mad at who.” Whenever he caught his patient in a slip, he had a way of slewing his eyes around as shyly as a young girl. “Now what might it be that you are mad about?”

“I’m not really.”

“I detected a little more m than b . I think maybe you are a little mad at me.”

“I don’t—” began the other, casting back in his mind to the events of the last session, but as usual he could remember nothing. “You may well be right, but I don’t recall anything in particular.”

“Maybe you think I’m a little mad at you.”

“I honestly don’t know,” said the patient, pretending to rack his brain but in fact savoring the other’s words. Maybe, for example, was minted deliberately as a bright new common coin mebbe in conscious preference to perhaps.

Dr. Gamow put his knees exactly together, put his head to one side, and sighted down into the kneehole of his desk. He might have been examining a bank of instruments. His nostril curved up exposing the septum of his nose and imparting to him a feral winged look which served to bear out his reputation of clinical skill. His double-breasted suit had wide lapels and it was easy to believe that, sitting as he did, hunched over and thick through the chest, his lapels bowed out like a cuirass, his lips pursed about the interesting reed of a tooth, that he served his patients best as artificer and shaper, receiving the raw stuff of their misery and handing it back in a public and acceptable form. “It does sound to me as if you’ve had a pr?tty bad time. Tell me about it.” And the unspeakable could be spoken of.

He told Dr. Gamow he had reached a decision. It seemed plain to him that he had exhausted the resources of analysis — not that he had not benefited enormously — and in the future he thought he might change places with the analyst, making a little joke of it, heh-heh. After spending almost five years as an object of technique, however valuable, he thought maybe he’d go over to the other side, become one of them, the scientists. He might even have an idea or two about the “failure of communication” and the “loss of identity” in the modern world (at it again, throwing roses in the path, knowing these were favorite subjects of Dr. Gamow’s). Mebbe he should strike out on his own.

For another thing, said he, he had run out of money.

“I see that after all you are a little mad at me,” said Dr. Gamow.

“How’s that?” said the patient, appearing to look caught out

“Perhaps it might be worthwhile to look into whatever it is you are mad about.”

“All right,” said the patient, who would as soon do one thing as another.

“Yesterday,” said the analyst, leafing back through his pad, “we were talking about your theory of environments. I believe you said that even under ideal conditions you felt somewhat — hollow was the word I think you used.”

“Yes.” He was genuinely surprised. He had forgotten that he had spoken of his new theory.

“I wondered out loud at the time what you meant by hollow — whether it referred toyour body or perhaps an organ, and it seemed to me you were offended by the suggestion.”

“Yes.”

He remembered now that he had been offended. He had known at the time that Dr. Gamow had thought he meant that he had felt actually hollowed out, brain or spleen emptied of its substance. It had offended him that Dr. Gamow had suggested that he might be crazy.

“I then made the suggestion that mebbe that was your way of getting rid of people, literally ‘hollowing them out,’ so to speak. A pr?tty thoroughgoing method of execution.”

“That is possible.”

“Finally, you may recall, you made a little slip at the end of the hour. You said you had to leave early — you had jumped up, you may recall — saying that you had to attend a meeting at the store, but you said ‘beating.’”

“Yes.”

“I couldn’t help but wonder who the beating was intended for. Was it you who got the beating from me yesterday? Or am I getting a beating from you today?”

“You could be right,” said the other, trying to straighten the ambiguous chair and face the doctor. He meant to signify that he wished to say something that should be listened to and not gotten at. “Nevertheless I have decided on a course of action and I think I’d better see it through.” For some reason he laughed heartily. “Oh me,” he said with a sigh.

“Hnhnhn,” said Dr. Gamow. It was an ancient and familiar sound, so used between them, so close in the ear, as hardly to be a sound at all.

The Southerner leaned back and looked at the print of hummingbirds. They symbolized ideas, Dr. Gamow had explained jokingly, happy ideas which he hoped would fly into the heads of his patients. One bird’s gorget did not quite fit; the print had been jogged in the making and the gorget had slipped and stuck out like a bib. For years the patient had gazed at this little patch of red, making a slight mental effort each time to put itback in place.

“I notice now that you use the phrase ‘run out’—‘Ihave run out of money’,” said Dr. Gamow. Lining up his feet again, he sighted along his knee like an astronaut. “The idea suggests itself that you literally ran out of your own money—”

“Figuratively,” murmured the other.

“Leaving it behind? I could not help but notice you seem to have acquired what seems to be a very expensive possession.”

“What is that?”

“The handsome leather case.” Dr. Gamow nodded toward the reception room. “Camera? Microscope?”

“Telescope,” he said. He had forgotten his recent purchase! He was, moreover, obscurely scandalized that the doctor should take account of something out in the waiting room.

“A telescope,” mused the analyst, sighting into the farthest depths of the desk. “Do you intend to become a seer?”

“A seer?”

“A see-er. After all a seer is a see-er, one who can see. Could it be that you believe that there is some ultimate hidden truth and that you have the magical means for obtaining it?”

“Ha-ha, there might be something in that. A see-er. Yes.”

“So now it seems you have spent your money on an instrument which will enable you to see the truth once and for all?”

The patient shrugged affably.

“It would be pr?tty nice if we could find a short cut and get around all this hard work. Do you remember, the last time you left you stood up and said: ‘Look here now, this analysis is all very well but how about telling me the truth just between ourselves, off the record, that is, what am I really supposed to do?’ Do you remember that?”