Sol Stein - Other people

I was meandering in thoughts like these when the doorbell rang and I went to greet this Thomassy. We shook hands. I do not want him in the study where I see my patients. I show him to a comfortable chair in my living room. He looks at me, I look at him, two animals of similar but different species inhabiting the same forest and meeting for the first time.

I would say he is in his middle forties. No accent, therefore probably American born or arrived before the age of twelve. Perhaps Greek-looking, but taller by far than Greeks, and in his movement strength, in his face I see what I envy, a man the world will not abuse easily. I wish I had a Rorschach of him!

"How much time have we got?" he says.

"You have twenty-five years, I have ten."

It takes him only a second to see that I am subtracting from three score and ten, and he laughs.

"You have a good laugh," I tell him.

"As distinguished from?"

"A bad laugh is a form of manipulation. I laugh to show I despise what you have said or what you are. I put you down. A good laugh is a quick, uncontrolled reaction, finding amusement or joy. Yours was a good laugh."

"Thank you," Thomassy said. "I suppose we get to think of analysts in terms of fifty minutes. We may need more. I have quite a few questions."

"Take all the time you need. Have you ever been to an analyst yourself?"

"No."

"Forgive me," I said, "I didn't mean to intrude on your private life. It's just I wanted to know if I may use the terms of reference we have. You are familiar with them?"

"Oh yes," he said. "Even the uneducated witness in the box now recognizes his unconscious slips have meaning."

I nodded. "Before we begin," I said, "I wonder if you would satisfy a small point of curiosity. I have not heard the name Thomassy before."

"It's Armenian, Thomassian. I shortened it."

"Why?"

"To keep people guessing. Koch is German?"

"I am a Jew," I said.

"I knew someone once who spent months trying to find a Gentile psychoanalyst."

"An anti-Semite looking to avoid a transference?"

"I guess he thought a Christian would be more forgiving."

I could not help laughing.

"I guess that was a good laugh," said Thomassy.

I was liking the man, which surprised me. I expect lawyers to be like lawyers the way the inexperienced expect Jews to be like Jews.

"Armenians suffered a great deal," I said.

"Most people don't know they exist."

"They were the first Christians. They carried their cross into the twentieth century."

"My father left his at Ellis Island."

"Too much was left at Ellis Island. We are beginning to reclaim it." I sighed. "The Turks were as bad as the Nazis."

"No," said Thomassy. "They weren't hypocrites. No Beethovens, Kants, no claims of high civilization. They hated us, they wanted us all dead. Straightforward. Anyway, I'm not here to right the wrongs of the world, doctor. I just want to see if I can be of some help to…"

"The Widmer woman, of course."

"Francine."

"Yes, let us call her Francine. She has asked you to pursue her assailant until he is punished for violating the one orifice that requires permission for its senses to be activated."

Thomassy seemed puzzled.

"The ears hear whatever sounds strike them," I explained. "The eyes, when open, see. The nose smells full time. The vagina requires an admission ticket."

"Dr. Koch, if you talk like that, I promise I'll never call you as a witness."

"Splendid. Already I have accomplished something."

"Francine feels she has been the victim of a serious crime some men don't understand."

I could not help sighing again. Francine had been working on him. "There are a thousand ways in which we rape each other, including ways that cause death sooner or later, yet there is only one form of rape that is categorized as a major crime. I think women have had greater influence on the law than they think."

"You think, doctor, that she is making too much of what happened to her?"

"No. But one must understand the woman to understand what this particular event meant. Can I get you some coffee?"

Thomassy said he preferred a scotch and soda. "I will join you," I said, "though I am not a drinker really." Then, settled once more, I said, "Francine is a zealot, which means she will try to pursue an idea till its end. She has courage, what we men chauvinistically refer to as 'balls.' "

"Would you explain?"

"It is my lifelong adventure to explain. It is my ego's flower. She has political interests, in the broad sense, as do many young women of this period. Where does she find employment? In the most conspicuous place where power does not work at all. In the enemy camp, in the United Nations. She is probably a disruptive force there, or could be. Do you find her disruptive?"

"Yes. I also find her attractive."

He too? "That can be a handicap with a client as with a patient."

"Yes," said Thomassy.

"What attracts you?"

"I don't want to bore you."

"No, no, go on."

"Spunk. What you said, balls."

"An aggressive quality normally associated with males. We analysts sometimes pay close attention to words. You know the other meaning of spunk?"

"Semen."

"Yes. Now how do you think I might help with this case of hers?"

Thomassy lit up his pipe, giving him a moment to formulate. I'm sure he does not enjoy this luxury in the courtroom. There would be other devices. Going to the counsel table for a pad. Pacing.

"Let me outline the problems I see," he said. "I will have a hard time convincing the District Attorney to press the case, even to the point of taking it before the Grand Jury."

"Why?"

"Because there is no external corroborating evidence. So many rape accusations come to nothing because rape is almost impossible to prove."

"Like love. Have you ever been in love?"

Koch, Koch, don't flirt with dangerous questions . "Go on," I said, "I didn't mean to interrupt."

Thomassy continued. "If you have property and someone takes it from you, if you can prove the property was yours, that you no longer have it, and that the accused now has it, and you say — even if there are no witnesses — that you did not give him permission to take it, then there is an easy basis for a juror agreeing."

"I see the problem with rape."

"I cannot take this case before a Grand Jury. I have to convince a district attorney to do so. And the prosecutor knows that if he gets the Grand Jury to see that there is sufficient evidence that a crime may have been committed, he will then have to face the choosing of twelve citizens who will decide. The prosecutor will want women on the jury because they share the fear of rape and they may be svmpathetic to Francine. But the defense counsel will want men, many of whom will have a touch or more of coercion in their past. The prosecutor will give in on men who have a daughter Francine's age. The defense counsel will try for the older, conservative male — preferably without daughters — who will automatically react adversely to the fact that Francine is physically attractive, and therefore tempting, that she does not wear a brassiere, which is a provocation, that she is not married yet at twenty-seven and the jury will get the idea she's been around. Under the new law, the defendant's lawyer can't cross-examine her about her sex life without risking a contempt citation, but so what? Her life style will be apparent, and that's enough to condemn her in a lot of eyes. For me, the most difficult aspect is that I will have to do whatever I can from backstage, as it were. It is the prosecutor and the defense counsel who will be adversaries in the arena, the people versus the defendant. As her lawyer I have no role except to shore up the reluctant prosecution as best I can. You see the problems?"