Luke Rheinhart - The Diceman

`Some way to his heart,' was the very phrase I thought in that day. A certain vocabulary and style go with every personality and every religion; under the influence of being Jesus Christ I found I loved people, and the experience expressed itself in unfamiliar actions and in unfamiliar language.

`Jake,' I finally said. `Do you ever feel great warmth and love toward people?'

He stopped with fork at mouth and gaped at me for a second.

`What's that?' he said: `Do you ever, have you ever felt a great rush of warmth and love toward some person or toward

all humanity?'

He stared a moment more, then said: `No. Freud associated such feelings with pantheism and the stage of development

of two-year-olds. I'd say the irrational flooding of love was regression.'

`And you've never felt it?'

'Nope. Why?'

But what if such feelings are .. . wonderful. What if they seem better, more desirable than any other state? Would its

being a regressive mode of feeling still make it undesirable?'

`Sure. Who's the patient? That Cannon kid you were telling me about?'

'What if I were to tell you that I feel such a surge of love and warmth for everyone?'

This stopped the steam-shovel machine.

`And dally love for you,' I added.

Jake blinked behind his glasses and looked - it's only my interpretation of a facial expression I'd never seen on his face

before frightened.

`I'd say you were regressing,' he said nervously. `You're blocked in some line of development and to escape

responsibility and to find help you feel this great childish love for everyone.'

He began eating again. `It'll pass.'

`Do you think I'm joking about this feeling, Jake?'

He looked away, his eyes jumping from object to object around the room like trapped sparrows.

`Can't tell, Luke. You've been acting strangely lately. Might be a game, might be sincere. Maybe you ought to get

back in analysis, talk it up with Tim there. I can't judge you here as a friend.'

`All right, Jake. But I want you to know that I love you and I don't think it has anything at all to do with object

cathexis or the anal stage.'

He blinked at me nervously, not eating.

`It's a Christeean love, or rather, a Judaic-Christ-Bean love, of course,' I added.

He was looking more and more terrified. I began to be afraid of him.

`I'm only referring to warm, passionate brotherly love, Jake, it's nothing to worry about.'

He smiled nervously, snuck in a quick squint and asked `Have these attacks very often, Luke?'

`Please don't worry about it. Tell me more about that patient. Have you finished your article about it?'

Jake was soon back on the main line, throttle wide open, his colleague, love-filled Lucius Rhinehart, successfully

sidetracked at Podunk Junction, there to be stationed hopefully until it was possible to write an article about him. `Sit

down, my son,' I said to Eric Cannon when he entered my little green room at QSH that afternoon. I had was feeling

very warm and Jesusy before buzzing for him to be brought in and, standing behind the desk, I looked at him now with love. He looked back at me as though he believed he could see into my soul, his large black eyes glimmering with apparent amusement. Despite his gray khakis and torn T-shirt he was serene and dignified, a lithe, long-haired Christ who looked as though he did gymnastics every day and had fucked every girl on the block.

He dragged a chair over near the window as he always did and flopped down with casual unconcern, his legs stretched out in front of him, a hole staring mutely at me from the bottom of his left sneaker.

Bowing my head, I said: `Let us pray.

He stopped open-mouthed in mid-yawn, his arms clasped behind his head, and stared. Then he drew in his legs, leaned

forward and lowered his head.

`Dear God,' I said aloud. `Help us this hour to serve thy will, be in tune with Thy soul and breathe each breath to Thy

glory. Amen.'

I sat down with my eyes still lowered, wondering where I went from here. In most of my early sessions with Eric, I

had been my usual non-directive self and, much to my discomfiture, he became the first patient in recorded psychiatric

history who; through his first three consecutive therapy sessions, was able to sit silent and thoroughly relaxed. In the

fourth he talked nonstop the entire hour on the state of the ward and world. In subsequent sessions he had alternated

between silence and soliloquy. In the previous three weeks I had tried only a couple of dice-dictated experiments and

had assigned Eric to try feeling love for all figures of authority but he had met all my ploys with silence. When I

raised my head now, he was looking at me alertly. Black eyes pinning me where I sat, he reached into his pocket,

leaned forward and wordlessly offered me a Winston.

`Thank you no,' I said.

`Just one Jesus to another,' he said with a mocking smile.

`No thank you.'

`What's with the prayer bit?' he asked.

'I feel . . . religious today,' I answered, `and I '

`Good for you,' he said.

`-wanted you to share my feeling.'

`Who are you to be religious?' he asked with sudden coolness.

`I . . . I am… I am Jesus,' I answered.

For a moment his face held its cool alertness, then it broke into a contemptuous smile.

`You haven't got the will,' he said.

`What do you mean?'

`You don't suffer, you don't care enough, you don't have the fire to be a Christ actually living on the earth.'

`And you, my son?'

`And I do. I've had a fire burning in my gut every moment of my life to wake this world up, to lash the fucking

bastards out of the temple, to bring a sword to-their peace-plagued souls.'

`But what of love?'

`Love?' he barked at me, his body now straight and tense in the chair. 'Love…' he said more quietly. `Yeah, love. I feel

love for those who suffer, those on the rack of the machine, but not for the guys at the controls, not for the torturers,

not for them.'

`Who are they?'

`You, buddy, and every guy in a position to change the machine or bust it or quit working on it who doesn't.'

`I'm part of the machine?'

`Every moment you play along with this farce of therapy in this nurse-infested prison, you're driving your nail into the

old cross.'

`But I want to help you, to give you health and happiness.'

`Careful, you'll make me puke.'

'And if I stopped working for the machine?'

`Then there'd be some hope for you. Then I might listen; then you would count.'

But if I leave the system how will I ever see you again?'

`There are visiting hours. And I'm only going to be with you here for a little while.'

We sat in our respective chairs eyeing each other with alert curosity.

`You aren't surprised that I began our session with a prayer or that I am Jesus?'

`You play games. I don't know why, but you do. It makes me hate you less than the others but know I should never

frost you.'

`Do you think you're Christ?'

His eyes shifted away from mine to the sooty window.

`He who has ears to hear let him hear,' he said.

'I'm not sure you love enough,' I said. `I feel that love is the key to it all, and you seem to have hate.'

He returned his gaze to me slowly.

`You might fight, Rhinehart. No games. You must know your friend and love him and know your enemy and attack.'

'That's hard,' I said.

`Just open your eyes. He who has eyes to see, let him see.'

'I'm always seeing good guys and bad guys yo-yoing up and down in the same person. I never see a target. I always

want to forgive, to love.'

`The man behind the machine, Rhinehart, and the man who is part of the machine: they're not hard to see. The lying and cheating and manipulating and killing: you've seen them. Just walk along the street and open your eyes and you won't lack for targets.'