`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.'
`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
