Mortals

getting the less important thing moved up to the head of the line where it didn’t belong. It was possible he was making this up so good sex between Iris and Morel wouldn’t be so painful. Iris would understand what he meant, or she would have. And there was the rub, so to speak. Of course it was possible that his insights were commonplace and uninteresting. That was why he needed Iris. Because not only would she know if they were, no, the fact was that just framing a way to set something in front of her mind would cause him to think twice, see it for what it was, dump it or postpone it, or improve it enough to go with. That was then, he thought. It was something he had to get used to.

Morel said, “Okay look you can stop worrying about that kind of thing.” He said it rapidly and Ray knew why. He was speeding through it because it made him feel false. He was affirming that there hadn’t been some kind of precursory sexual situation with Iris, which he could do with a clear conscience. And at the same time he was skating past the fact that he was having an affair in the present, right at present, if affair was the right word for it. He was skating past a sex situation that was worse, more monumental.

“Thank you,” Ray said.

“My pleasure,” Morel answered. Ray resented Morel’s choice of language.

“So then can you just go a little further for me, on what it is you feel you have to be confidential about? I mean, narrow it down in some way.”

“Okay, let me see. Well, very generally, it was for therapy.”

“As in psychotherapy.”

“Yes.”

“She was… what?”

“She was in need of therapy. Oh fuck it, man, she was depressed. That’s it.”

“And now she isn’t.”

“Right, she isn’t.”

“Now she’s happy.”

“I didn’t say she’s happy. What I am saying is that she isn’t depressed.”

“Clinically depressed, you’re saying she was?”

“I don’t know what that is. It’s a label. She was unhappy enough to want to talk about it and do something about it.”

Don’t make me kill you, Ray thought. The fact was he had some respect for Morel’s ethics so far. He was holding back information he knew would be painful to Ray, holding it back as well as he could. And he was couching everything he did say so that nothing would be a lie direct when they got to the heart of the labyrinth and met the beast, the one with two backs. Because they were going to get there. On the other hand the man was intolerable and it was intolerable that what he was saying without actually saying it was that Iris was much happier now that she was receiving the doctor’s mighty affection, the doctor’s love and care with the emphasis on love, the clouds lifting, landscapes of joy by Maxfield Parrish springing into view, paradise, O paradise. And she was a paradise… a portable one, apparently. No, Morel was smart and tough, but he was going to have to let everything out. It was coming. The man was intelligent. He had to know.

Ray was ready for Morel to be adamant in denial, but this was probably the best moment to go in for the truth. The Adamant Penis would be a good title for a porn thing. It could go with the titles of unwritten books in his brother’s olla podrida. The Butcher Elf was one of those. He had to get Strange News back from the bastards who had it now. It was urgent. He had to try.

“You admire my wife,” Ray said, which was wrong, which would remind Morel of her legal status. It would put his back up. He was going to stick strictly to Iris for the foreseeable future.

“Of course,” Morel said.

Ray felt he needed to switch his angle of attack.

He said, “By the way, I don’t know if this is the right question but what, um, school of therapy are you in, or from? That is, who do you follow? I’m curious.”

Ray waited. There were a number of ludicrous or exploded names he could think of that might be mentioned, like Jung, like the Englishman whose name he couldn’t remember who had encouraged people to go nuts as a form of liberation. And of course Freud himself was in a certain amount of bad odor. It was too much to hope for that Morel would mention somebody Ray knew was an established fool. We live in hope, Ray thought.

Morel said, “No particular school. I took the basic courses for qualifying in psychiatry but I never got a certificate. I read a lot and I rejected a lot and I came up with my own mix.”

“Your own mix.”

“Yes. Well, I like the work of Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom, do you know it?”

The name was a name he knew and that was all he knew. But he didn’t necessarily like the title of the book Morel had mentioned. And he did realize he had made a mistake, opening up an avenue to a discussion of different schools of therapy instead of getting to the subject matter. He had to retreat so he could attack properly, reculer pour mieux sauter, was the phrase. We live out phrases we barely remember, he thought.

Suddenly something intrusive was going on outside, at a distance. There were cries. He and Morel tried to listen seriously together. The cries stopped. Ray realized that his injuries had come back to life, hurting, all at once. They had been fine when he had been concentrating on the subject matter. Something terrible was going on in what it was fair to call the outside world, but he wanted it to stop mainly so he could continue going where he had been going with Morel. He couldn’t help it.

Morel wanted to keep on listening to the fracas or whatever it was. He wanted Ray to listen with him and that was unacceptable because the subject matter had to be gotten through. Nothing would be normal until that was accomplished.

Ray said, “You find Iris attractive.”

Morel made a show of reluctance in turning his attention back to Ray, to the subject matter.

“When did I say that?” Morel asked.

“But do you or don’t you?”

“She’s an attractive woman. Yes.”

“So you find her attractive?”

“What is this?”

“She’s staying at your place, isn’t she? Can we establish that?”

“She came to the intensive, yes.”

“And she’s still staying there now.” It stands to reason, Ray thought. He was guessing, but he was sure it was the case.

Morel was hesitant. He was contemplating the possibility that word of the arrangement had somehow reached Ray in the depths of the Kalahari.

“You’re right. She’s at my place, looking after things. After we decided I should come up here it seemed to make sense. She’s been helpful around the place, in the office, in the clinic.”

“She’s helpful to you.”

“She is, really. In fact we talked about a position.”

“A position there, with you.” Words are cruel, Ray thought.

“Part-time.”

“So you find her attractive and maybe she could have a job in your establishment.”

“I don’t get this.”

“Sure you do. But let me ask you a different question. Which is this. Assume something happened to me, say. This is hypothetical. Something happened to take me away. A misadventure. You would help her. You’d see that she was fine.”

“Don’t you have insurance?”

“Sure. But say she’s distraught. She needs help. She wants to stay in Africa. Her family in America, forget it. She’s at her wit’s end. You’d help her, take over and help her, orient her. This huge venue you live in, plenty of room. You take people in, you have. She told me about that. It’s something you do. And this is a woman you’ve helped to get on her feet from something that was bothering her, whatever that was. How would I know? But you’ve gotten her out of depression, an episode. She depends on you.”