Seize the Day Read online

  Dr. Tamkin told Wilhelm, “Your dad is jealous of you.”

  Wilhelm smiled. “Of me? That’s rich.”

  “Sure. People are always jealous of a man who leaves his wife.”

  “Oh,” said Wilhelm scornfully. “When it comes to wives he wouldn’t have to envy me.”

  “Yes, and your wife envies you, too. She thinks, He’s free and goes with young women. Is she getting old?”

  “Not exactly old,” said Wilhelm, whom the mention of his wife made sad. Twenty years ago, in a neat blue wool suit, in a soft hat made of the same cloth—he could plainly see her. He stooped his yellow head and looked under the hat at her clear, simple face, her living eyes moving, her straight small nose, her jaw beautifully, painfully clear in its form. It was a cool day, but he smelled the odor of pines in the sun, in the granite canyon. Just south of Santa Barbara, this was.

  “She’s forty-some years old,” he said.

  “I was married to a lush,” said Tamkin. “A painful alcoholic. I couldn’t take her out to dinner because she’d say she was going to the ladies’ toilet and disappear into the bar. I’d ask the bartenders they shouldn’t serve her. But I loved her deeply. She was the most spiritual woman of my entire experience.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Drowned,” said Tamkin. “At Provincetown, Cape Cod. It must have been a suicide. She was that way—suicidal. I tried everything in my power to cure her. Because,” said Tamkin, “my real calling is to be a healer. I get wounded. I suffer from it. I would like to escape from the sicknesses of others, but I can’t. I am only on loan to myself, so to speak. I belong to humanity.”

  Liar! Wilhelm inwardly called him. Nasty lies. He invented a woman and killed her off and then called himself a healer, and made himself so earnest he looked like a bad-natured sheep. He’s a puffed-up little bogus and humbug with smelly feet. A doctor! A doctor would wash himself. He believes he’s making a terrific impression, and he practically invites you to take off your hat when he talks about himself; and he thinks he has an imagination, but he hasn’t, neither is he smart.

  Then what am I doing with him here, and why did I give him the seven hundred dollars? thought Wilhelm.

  Oh, this was a day of reckoning. It was a day, he thought, on which, willing or not, he would take a good close look at the truth. He breathed hard and his misshapen hat came low upon his congested dark-blond face. A rude look. Tamkin was a charlatan, and furthermore he was desperate. And furthermore, Wilhelm had always known this about him. But he appeared to have worked it out at the back of his mind that Tamkin for thirty or forty years had gotten through many a tight place, that he would get through this crisis too and bring him, Wilhelm, to safety also. And Wilhelm realized that he was on Tamkin’s back. It made him feel that he had virtually left the ground and was riding upon the other man. He was in the air. It was for Tamkin to take the steps.

  The doctor, if he was a doctor, did not look anxious. But then his face did not have much variety. Talking always about spontaneous emotion and open receptors and free impulses, he was about as expressive as a pincushion. When his hypnotic spell failed, his big underlip made him look weak-minded. Fear stared from his eyes, sometimes, so humble as to make you sorry for him. Once or twice Wilhelm had seen that look. Like a dog, he thought. Perhaps he didn’t look it now, but he was very nervous. Wilhelm knew, but he could not afford to recognize this too openly. The doctor needed a little room, a little time. He should not be pressed now. So Tamkin went on, telling his tales.

  Wilhelm said to himself, I am on his back—his back. I gambled seven hundred bucks, so I must take this ride. I have to go along with him. It’s too late. I can’t get off.

  “You know,” Tamkin said, “that blind old man Rappaport—he’s pretty close to totally blind—is one of the most interesting personalities around here. If you could only get him to tell his true story. It’s fascinating. This is what he told me. You often hear about bigamists with a secret life. But this old man never hid anything from anybody. He’s a regular patriarch. Now, I’ll tell you what he did. He had two whole families, separate and apart, one in Williamsburg and the other in the Bronx. The two wives knew about each other. The wife in the Bronx was younger; she’s close to seventy now. When he got sore at one wife he went to live with the other one. Meanwhile he ran his chicken business in New Jersey. By one wife he had four kids, and by the other six. They’re all grown, but they never have met their half-brothers and sisters and don’t want to. The whole bunch of them are listed in the telephone book.”

  “I can’t believe it,” said Wilhelm.

  “He told me this himself. And do you know what else? While he had his eyesight he used to read a lot, but the only books he would read were by Theodore Roosevelt. He had a set in each of the places where he lived, and he brought his kids up on those books.”

  “Please,” said Wilhelm, “don’t feed me any more of this stuff, will you? Kindly do not—”

  “In telling you this,” said Tamkin with one of his hypnotic subtleties, “I do have a motive. I want you to see how some people free themselves from morbid guilt feelings and follow their instincts. Innately, the female knows how to cripple by sickening a man with guilt. It is a very special destruct, and she sends her curse to make a fellow impotent. As if she says, ‘Unless I allow it, you will never more be a man.’ But men like my old dad or Mr. Rappaport answer, ‘Woman, what art thou to me?’ You can’t do that yet. You’re a halfway case. You want to follow your instinct, but you’re too worried still. For instance, about your kids—”

  “Now look here,” said Wilhelm, stamping his feet. “One thing! Don’t bring up my boys. Just lay off.”

  “I was only going to say that they are better off than with conflicts in the home.”

  “I’m deprived of my children.” Wilhelm bit his lip. It was too late to turn away. The anguish struck him. “I pay and pay. I never see them. They grow up without me. She makes them like herself. She’ll bring them up to be my enemies. Please let’s not talk about this.”

  But Tamkin said, “Why do you let her make you suffer so? It defeats the original object in leaving her. Don’t play her game. Now, Wilhelm, I’m trying to do you some good. I want to tell you, don’t marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it’s adultery.”

  When Wilhelm heard this he had, in spite of himself, to admit that there was a great deal in Tamkin’s words. Yes, thought Wilhelm, suffering is the only kind of life they are sure they can have, and if they quit suffering they’re afraid they’ll have nothing. He knows it. This time the faker knows what he’s talking about.

  Looking at Tamkin he believed he saw all this confessed from his usually barren face. Yes, yes, he too. One hundred falsehoods, but at last one truth. Howling like a wolf from the city window. No one can bear it any more. Everyone is so full of it that at last everybody must proclaim it. It! It!

  Then suddenly Wilhelm rose and said, “That’s enough of this. Tamkin, let’s go back to the market.”

  “I haven’t finished my melon.”

  “Never mind that. You’ve had enough to eat. I want to go back.”

  Dr. Tamkin slid the two checks across the table. “Who paid yesterday? It’s your turn, I think.”

  It was not until they were leaving the cafeteria that Wilhelm remembered definitely that he had paid yesterday too. But it wasn’t worth arguing about.

  Tamkin kept repeating as they walked down the street that there were many who were dedicated to suffering. But he told Wilhelm, “I’m optimistic in your case, and I have seen a world of maladjustment. There’s hope for you. You don’t really want to destroy yourself. You’re trying hard to keep your feelings open, Wilhelm. I can see it. Seven per cent of this country is committing suicide by alcohol. Another three, maybe, narcotics. Another sixty just fading away into dust by boredom. Twenty more who have sold their souls to the Devil. Then there�
��s a small percentage of those who want to live. That’s the only significant thing in the whole world of today. Those are the only two classes of people there are. Some want to live, but the great majority don’t.” This fantastic Tamkin began to surpass himself. “They don’t. Or else, why these wars? I’ll tell you more,” he said. “The love of the dying amounts to one thing; they want you to die with them. It’s because they love you. Make no mistake.”

  True, true! thought Wilhelm, profoundly moved by these revelations. How does he know these things? How can he be such a jerk, and even perhaps an operator, a swindler, and understand so well what gives? I believe what he says. It simplifies much—everything. People are dropping like flies. I am trying to stay alive and work too hard at it. That’s what’s turning my brains. This working hard defeats its own end. At what point should I start over? Let me go back a ways and try once more.

  Only a few hundred yards separated the cafeteria from the broker’s, and within that short space Wilhelm turned again, in measurable degrees, from these wide considerations to the problems of the moment. The closer he approached to the market, the more Wilhelm had to think about money.

  They passed the newsreel theater where the ragged shoeshine kids called after them. The same old bearded man with his bandaged beggar face and his tiny ragged feet and the old press clipping on his fiddle case to prove he had once been a concert violinist, pointed his bow at Wilhelm, saying, “You!” Wilhelm went by with worried eyes, bent on crossing Seventy-second Street. In full tumult the great afternoon current raced for Columbus Circle, where the mouth of midtown stood open and the skyscrapers gave back the yellow fire of the sun.

  As they approached the polished stone front of the new office building, Dr. Tamkin said, “Well, isn’t that old Rappaport by the door? I think he should carry a white cane, but he will never admit there’s a single thing the matter with his eyes.”

  Mr. Rappaport did not stand well; his knees were sunk, while his pelvis only half filled his trousers. His suspenders held them, gaping.

  He stopped Wilhelm with an extended hand, having somehow recognized him. In his deep voice he commanded him, “Take me to the cigar store.”

  “You want me—? Tamkin!” Wilhelm whispered, “You take him.”

  Tamkin shook his head. “He wants you. Don’t refuse the old gentleman.” Significantly he said in a lower voice, “This minute is another instance of the ‘here-and-now.’ You have to live in this very minute, and you don’t want to. A man asks you for help. Don’t think of the market. It won’t run away. Show your respect to the old boy. Go ahead. That may be more valuable.”

  “Take me,” said the old chicken merchant again.

  Greatly annoyed, Wilhelm wrinkled his face at Tamkin. He took the old man’s big but light elbow at the bone. “Well, let’s step on it,” he said. “Or wait—I want to have a look at the board first to see how we’re doing.”

  But Tamkin had already started Mr. Rappaport forward. He was walking, and he scolded Wilhelm, saying, “Don’t leave me standing in the middle of the sidewalk. I’m afraid to get knocked over.”

  “Let’s get a move on. Come.” Wilhelm urged him as Tamkin went into the broker’s.

  The traffic seemed to come down Broadway out of the sky, where the hot spokes of the sun rolled from the south. Hot, stony odors rose from the subway grating in the street.

  “These teen-age hoodlums worry me. I’m ascared of these Puerto Rican kids, and these young characters who take dope,” said Mr. Rappaport. “They go around all hopped up.”

  “Hoodlums?” said Wilhelm. “I went to the cemetery and my mother’s stone bench was split. I could have broken somebody’s neck for that. Which store do you go to?”

  “Across Broadway. That La Magnita sign next door to the Automat.”

  “What’s the matter with this store here on this side?”

  “They don’t carry my brand, that’s what’s the matter.”

  Wilhelm cursed, but checked the words.

  “What are you talking?”

  “Those damn taxis,” said Wilhelm. “They want to run everybody down.”

  They entered the cool, odorous shop. Mr. Rappaport put away his large cigars with great care in various pockets while Wilhelm muttered, “Come on, you old creeper. What a poky old character! The whole world waits on him.” Rappaport did not offer Wilhelm a cigar, but, holding one up, he asked, “What do you say at the size of these, huh? They’re Churchill-type cigars.”

  He barely crawls along, thought Wilhelm. His pants are dropping off because he hasn’t got enough flesh for them to stick to. He’s almost blind, and covered with spots, but this old man still makes money in the market. Is loaded with dough, probably. And I bet he doesn’t give his children any. Some of them must be in their fifties. This is what keeps middle-aged men as children. He’s master over the dough. Think—just think! Who controls everything? Old men of this type. Without needs. They don’t need therefore they have. I need, therefore I don’t have. That would be too easy.

  “I’m older even than Churchill,” said Rappaport.

  Now he wanted to talk! But if you asked him a question in the market, he couldn’t be bothered to answer.

  “I bet you are,” said Wilhelm. “Come, let’s get going.”

  “I was a fighter, too, like Churchill,” said the old man. “When we licked Spain I went into the Navy. Yes, I was a gob that time. What did I have to lose? Nothing. After the battle of San Juan Hill, Teddy Roosevelt kicked me off the beach.”

  “Come, watch the curb,” said Wilhelm.

  “I was curious and wanted to see what went on. I didn’t have no business there, but I took a boat and rowed myself to the beach. Two of our guys was dead, layin’ under the American flag to keep the flies off. So I says to the guy on duty, there, who was the sentry, ‘Let’s have a look at these guys. I want to see what went on here,’ and he says, ‘Naw,’ but I talked him into it. So he took off the flag and there were these two tall guys, both gentlemen, lying in their boots. They was very tall. The two of them had long mustaches. They were high-society boys. I think one of them was called Fish, from up the Hudson, a big-shot family. When I looked up, there was Teddy Roosevelt, with his hat off, and he was looking at these fellows, the only ones who got killed there. Then he says to me, ‘What’s the Navy want here? Have you got orders?’ ‘No, sir,’ I says to him. ‘Well, get the hell off the beach, then.’ ”

  Old Rappaport was very proud of this memory. “Everything he said had such snap, such class. Man! I love that Teddy Roosevelt,” he said, “I love him!”

  Ah, what people are! He is almost not with us, and his life is nearly gone, but T.R. once yelled at him, so he loves him. I guess it is love, too. Wilhelm smiled. So maybe the rest of Tamkin’s story was true, about the ten children and the wives and the telephone directory.

  He said, “Come on, come on, Mr. Rappaport,” and hurried the old man back by the large hollow elbow; he gripped it through the thin cotton cloth. Re-entering the brokerage office where under the lights the tumblers were speeding with the clack of drumsticks upon wooden blocks, more than ever resembling a Chinese theater, Wilhelm strained his eyes to see the board.

  The lard figures were unfamiliar. That amount couldn’t be lard! They must have put the figures in the wrong slot. He traced the line back to the margin. It was down to .19, and had dropped twenty points since noon. And what about the contract of rye? It had sunk back to its earlier position, and they had lost their chance to sell.

  Old Mr. Rappaport said to Wilhelm, “Read me my wheat figure.”

  “Oh, leave me alone for a minute,” he said, and positively hid his face from the old man behind one hand. He looked for Tamkin, Tamkin’s bald head, or Tamkin with his gray straw and the cocoa-colored band. He couldn’t see him. Where was he? The seats next to Rowland were taken by strangers. He thrust himself over the one on the aisle, Mr. Rappaport’s former place, and pushed at the back of the chair until the new occupant, a red-headed
man with a thin, determined face, leaned forward to get out of his way but would not surrender the seat. “Where’s Tamkin?” Wilhelm asked Rowland.