We were having lunch: cold salmon, salad, bread and wine, a week after Rafi and I had been to Miriam’s place. Henry had come over for talk and distraction.
Now Maria was holding out the telephone. “Mr. Bushy is outside.”
“I see. Thank you.” When I put the phone down, I said to Henry, “It’s for you. Bushy’s brought you the supplies you asked for.”
“Ah. Supplies. At last. What does Baudelaire call it? ‘The longing for the infinite…’ Bring it on!”
There was considerable jangling in the hall, like someone pouring a bag full of coins down a metal chute. That wouldn’t be Bushy. As an ex-burglar, he was a quiet man. It was Miriam herself, clearly wearing all her jewellery at once, and up on both legs, too, without the sticks she sometimes used. In she came, removing her black crushed-velvet cloak and handing it to Maria, who gave her the respect she’d have accorded any queen I admired, male or female.
Miriam was wrapped in layers of flashing semi-psychedelic clothing along with a black, Goth, spiderweb top. Her wild hair was freshly streaked with red and blue, her face studs sparkling, a renovation which must have caused her considerable trouble.
“I was in a cage with the black wolf this morning,” she said as she swept in. “Close to his spirit. He was looking away, to the east, worrying about those being blown up in the war. He said I should come here. Connections needed to be made. I had to bring this myself.”
“Right,” said Henry, looking at her eagerly. I have to say it surprised me to see Miriam come in by herself. Like any other celebrity, she didn’t like to be seen alone, and because she was infirm she usually had a smaller person on each side of her, upon whom she could rest.
Henry seemed impressed. “Absolutely.”
We leaned towards it. The “infinite” was in the exquisite wooden box she held out in front of her. I recognised it. Our mother, with her passion for markets and antiques, had collected anything “Eastern” and held on to it. “It was only the husband who got away” was my response to her incessant dusting of various items of chinoiserie.
She gave him the box. “Here, Henry.”
“Miriam, darling, you are a good person!”
“I am, I am-but only you appreciate it!”
You should have seen it-the two of them suddenly in each other’s arms, long lost.
Miriam sat beside Henry, opened the box and unwrapped some grass. She offered it to his nose-a nose which had travelled the length and breadth of France in search of wine, with actor pals resilient enough to enjoy his monologues.
“Against death and authoritarianism there is only one thing,” he said once. “Love?” I suggested. “Culture, I was going to say,” he said. “Far more important. Any clown can fall in love or have sex. But to write a play, paint a Rothko or discover the unconscious-aren’t these extraordinary feats of imagination, the only negation of the human desire to murder?”
Now he swooned and his chins wobbled over the simplest thing.
“What d’you feel?” Miriam asked.
“Oh, Miriam, it’s your fingers I am admiring.”
“I know.”
“Where did you get the black nail varnish?”
“Wait, wait,” urged Miriam. “Here.”
Henry leaned forward, her anxiety drawing him. “What is it?”
Maria and I watched her place both hands on Henry’s head. She shook her own head sorrowfully: Henry’s discontent was vibrating in her fingertips.
“What is it?” said Henry. “Genius? Cancer? A jinn?”
“What sign are you?” she asked. This was not a good question to ask Henry, but she went on quickly, “Have you seen a ghost recently?”
“A ghost?” he said. “Of course!”
“How many?”
“You really want to know?”
“I can say you are definitely inhabited!” she said firmly.
“I always knew it,” he said. “But only you recognise it!”
“But not possessed.”
“No? Not possessed?”
I could see that Maria, listening from the door, was about to panic. I took a last mouthful of food, glanced at my watch and said, “I must go for my walk.”
Outside, Bushy was standing across the road leaning against his car, smoking. I waved and called out. Seeing me, he gathered himself together; his mouth began to work, no doubt a dream emerging from it.
“Want a lift?” he shouted. He was coming over, but I kept moving. He was beside me. “’Ere,” he said. “You know all about it-I’m having more sex now than I’ve ever had! A man without his dick up someone is no good to no one.”
“I’m glad to hear it, Bushy,” I said, scuttling away.
When I returned from my walk, just before my first patient of the afternoon arrived, Henry and my sister had gone. Maria was clearing up. She said that Bushy had driven them down to the river at Hammersmith, where there was a pub, the Dove, that Henry knew. “No doubt,” she said with some disapproval, “they’ll be spending the afternoon there.”
“Good,” I said, going into my room. “Can you show the patient in, please?”
CHAPTER SIX
A man goes to an analyst and says, “Please, sir, I am desperate, if you cure me I will give you my fortune!” The analyst replies, “I don’t want your fortune, just fifty pounds a session.” The man says, “Why so much?” To which the analyst answers, “At least you know the price.”
My patients are businessmen, hookers, artists, teenagers, magazine editors, actors, PR people, a woman of eighty, a psychiatrist, a car mechanic, a footballer, and three children, amongst others. When I greet a patient at the door and follow them into my room, waiting while they prepare to either sit or lie on the couch-I prefer them to lie down; as Freud said: “I don’t like to be stared at for eight hours a day”-I am eager to hear what they have to say, and keen for it to go well between us.
As a therapist, what sort of knowledge do I have? What I do is old-fashioned, almost quaint, compared to the technological and scientific medicine now available. Though I do no examination and offer no drugs, I am like a traditional doctor in that I treat the whole person rather than only the illness. Indeed, I am the drug, and part of the cure. Not that most people want to be cured. Their illnesses provide them with more satisfaction than they can bear. Patients are unconscious artists of their own misery, and what they call their symptom is, in fact, their life, and they’d better love it!
Some people would rather be shot than speak. All I can do is let the subjects speak for a long time; both of us taking their words seriously, knowing that even when they are speaking the truth they are lying, and that when they speak of someone else they are speaking of themselves.
I ask questions about the family, right back to the grandparents. Where can suffering people turn now for the disorders of desire?
In the end, what qualifies someone for analysis? Ultimately it is the most human thing, the recognition of inexplicable pain and some curiosity about one’s inner life. How could analysis not be difficult? To have lived in a particular way for years, decades even, and then to try to undo it through talking is significant labour. Not that it always works; there is no guarantee, nor should there be. There is always risk.
Alas, to the surprise of many, psychoanalysis doesn’t make people behave better, nor does it make them morally good. It may well make them more of a nuisance, more argumentative, more demanding, more aware of their desire and less likely to accept the dominion of others. In that sense it is subversive and emancipatory. But then there are few people who, when they are old, wish they’d lived a more virtuous life. From what I hear in my room, most people wish they’d sinned more. They also wish they’d taken better care of their teeth.