The Dice Man

  `You really believe that crap?'

  `Yes.'

  `I want my money back.'

  ` I almost cried that day when I met Jake for lunch. I so wanted to help him, trapped by that relentless overcharged engine of his, zooming through life missing everything, and especially missing the great love that filled me. He was forking down great gobs of beef stew and lima beans and telling me about a patient of his who had committed suicide by mistake. I was searching for some way to break down the seemingly impenetrable wall of his armored self and finding none. As the meal progressed I became sadder and sadder. I felt tears forming in my eyes. I irritably stopped the sentimentality and searched again for some way to his heart.

  `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 s
eem 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.'

  `But do you ask us to kill them?'

  `I ask you to fight them. There's a worldwide war on and everybody's drafted and you're either for the machine or you're against it, a part of it, or getting your balls raked by it every day. Life today is a war whether you want it to be or not, and so far, Rhinehart, you've been doing your part for the other side.'

  `But thou shall love thy enemies,' I said.

  `Sure. And thou shall hate evil,' he answered.

  `Judge not, that ye be not judged.'

  `He who sits on a fence, gets it up his ass,' he replied without smile.

  `I lack the fire: I like everybody,' I said sadly.

  `You lack the fire.'

  `What am I good for then? I wish to be a religious person.'

  'A disciple, maybe,' he said.

  `One of the twelve?'

  `Most likely. You charge thirty bucks an hour?'

  Sitting opposite Arturo Toscanini Jones a half hour later I felt depressed and tired and un-Jesusy and didn't say much. Since as usual Jones was quiet too, we sat there pleasantly isolated in our private worlds until I rustled up enough energy to try to carry out my role.

  `Mr. Jones,' I finally said, looking at his tensed body and frowning fate, `although I agree that you're right not to trust any white man, try to assume for a moment that I, because perhaps of some neurosis of my own, feel an overwhelming warmth toward you and want deeply to help you in any way possible. What might I be able to do?'

  'Get me out of here,' he said as if he'd been expecting the question.

  I considered this. In the twenty or so sessions we'd talked I had found this to be his one all-consuming desire; like a caged animal he had no other.

  `And after I've helped you be released what then might I do?'

  `Get me out of here. Until I'm free I can't think about anything else. On the outside, well...'

  `What would you do on the outside?'

  He turned on me sharply.

  'Goddam it, man, I said get me out of here, not more talk. You said you wanted to help and you keep on rapping.'

  I considered this. It was clear that nothing I would do for Jones inside the hospital would be anything but the act of a white doctor. Unless I broke through that stereotype my love would never touch him. Once released he might well consider me a stupid Charlie that he had fucked good, but that seemed an irrelevant consideration. Inside the hospital there could only be hate. Outside . . .

  I stood up and walked over to the sooty window and looked out at a group of patients playing a listless game of softball.

  `I'll have you released right now. You can go home this afternoon, before supper. It will be slightly illegal and I may get into trouble, but if freedom is all I can give you then that's what I'll give.'

  `You puttin' me on?'

  `You'll be back in the city within an hour if I have to drive you there myself.'

  What's the catch? If I can go free today why couldn't I go free a month ago? I ain't changed none.'

  He sneered at his own grammar.

  `Yes, I know. But I have.'

  I turned my back on him again and stared out across the lawn and past the softball game to watch a little boy trying to fly a kite.

  `I think this hospital is a prison and that the doctors are jailers,' I said, `and the city is hell and that our society acts to kill the spirit of love which might exist between man and man. I'm lucky. I'm a jailer and not one of the jailed and thus I can help you. I will help you. But let me-ask one favor of you.'

  When I turned back to him he was leaning forward on the edge of the chair with concentrated animal tension. When I paused, he frowned and whispered out a `How?'

  That frown and whisper warned me that the two possible `favors' I had in mind would both fail: `Come and see me at my office' and `be my friend: A man didn't befriend his jailer for giving him freedom since the freedom was deserved, and the doctor-patient relation had failure built into it. I stood looking at him blankly.

  'What do you want me to do?' he asked.

  Outside I heard a boat's horn from the river groan twice, like warning snorts.

  `Nothing, I said. `Nothing. I just remembered that I want to help you. Period. You don't have to do anything. You'll go free. Outside, what you do is what you do. You'll be free of this hospital and free of me.'

  He stared suspiciously and I stared back, feeling serious and ham actor noble. The urge to suggest verbally that I was being great for doing this was strong, but humble Jesus won out.

  `Come on,' I said. `Lets go and get your clothes end get out of here.'

  As it turned out, it took more than an hour to get Arturo Toscanini Jones released and even then, as I had feared, it was illegal. I got him released from the ward in my custody, but such a release did not give him permission to leave the hospital: That took formal action of one of the directors and was impossible for that afternoon. I'd talk to Dr. Mann at lunch on Friday, or maybe phone.

  I drove Jones to Manhattan and then uptown to his mother's home at 142nd Street. Neither of us said a single word during the entire drive and when I let him out he said only: `Thanks for the ride.'

  'That's okay,' I answered.

  After a barely perceptible pause he slammed the door and strode away.

  Strike up another scoreless innings for Jesus.

  I was exhausted by the time I had gotten Arturo released from the hospital and my silence with him in the car was partly fatigue. Trying minute after minute to be someone not totally natural to the personality, as Jesus was for me, was hard work. Impossible work, as a matter of fact. During that whole day I noticed that after about forty minutes of being a loving Jesus my system-would simply break down into apathy and in difference. If I continued the role past the forty-minute point it was purely mechanical rather than felt.

  As I drove toward my rendezvous with Arlene my bleary mind tried to scrutinize my relations with her. Christianity frowns on adultery: this much I was able to come up with. Our relationship was a sin. Should Jesus simply avoid a rendezvous with his mistress? No. He would want to express his love for her. His agape. He would want to remind her of various relevant commandments.

  Such was the intention of Jesus when he met Mrs. Jacob Ecstein that afternoon at the corner of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in Harlem and drove to an obscure section of the parking lot at La Guardia Airport overlooking the bay. The woman was cheerful and relaxed and spoke during most of the drive about Portnoy's Complaint, a book which Jesus had not read. It was clear from her speaking, however, that the author of the novel had not discovered love, and that the effect upon Mrs. Ecstein was to increase her cynical, guiltless, shameless devil-may-care immersion in her gin. It seemed to Jesus precisely the wrong mood for his beginning to discuss Judao-Christian love.

  'Arlene,' spoke Jesus, after he had parked, `do you ever feel great warmth and love toward people?'

  `Only for you, lover,' she replied.

  `Have you never felt a great rush of warmth and love toward some person or toward all humanity?'

  The woman cocked her head and thought.

  `Occasionally.'

  `To what do you attribute it?'

  `Alcohol.'

  The woman unzipped the fly of Jesus and reached a hand in and enclosed the Sacred Tool. It was, all accounts agree, filled
only with agape.

  `My daughter,' he said, `are you not concerned with causing unhappiness to your husband or to Lillian?'

  She stared at him.

  `Of course not. I love this.'

  `Are your husband's feelings of no concern to you?'

  `Jake's feelings!' she shouted. `Jake, is completely well-adjusted. He doesn't have any feelings.'

  'Not even love?'

  `Perhaps once a week he has that.' `But Lillian has feelings. God has feelings.'

  `I know, and I think what you're doing to her is cruel.'

  `That is true, and you and Dr. Rhinehart must stop doing that which is so clearly sinful and which must hurt her.'

  `We're not doing anything, it's you that makes her suffer.'

  `Dr. Rhinehart will be a better man.'

  `Good. I hate to see her so upset with you: She gave the Sacred Tool a little friendly squeeze and then lowered her head to his lap and sucked in the Spiritual Spaghetti.

  `But Arlene!' He said. `Dr. Rhinehart's making love to you is fornication, is what might hurt her.'

  The woman tempted Jesus further with her serpent's tongue, but producing no measurable effect, raised herself. Denied her sinful pleasure she looked peevish.

  `What are you talking about? What's fornication, another of your perversions?'

  `Physical intercourse with Dr. Rhinehart is a sin.'

  `Who's this Dr. Rhinehart you keep talking about? What's the matter with you today?'

  `What you have been doing is cruel and selfish and against the word of God. Your affair might have disastrous effects upon Lillian and the children.'

  `How?'

  'If they found out'

  'She'd only divorce you.' Jesus stared at the woman.

  `We are speaking of human beings and of the Sacred Institution of Marriage,' He said.

  `I don't know what you're talking about' Jesus became wrathful and thrust the woman's hand away and zipped up the Holy Fly.

  `You are so buried in your sin you cannot see what you do.'

  The woman was angry too.

  `You've been enjoying yourself for three months and now all of a sudden you discover sin and that I'm a sinner.'

  `Dr. Rhinehart is a sinner too.'

  The woman poked back at the Crotch.

  'Not much of a one today,' she said.