buzzed.
“A point and a half more, and we can cover the lard losses,” said Tamkin. He showed him his calculations on the margin of the
“I think you should put in the selling order now. Let’s get out with a small loss.”
“Get out now? Nothing doing.”
“Why not? Why should we wait?”
“Because,” said Tamkin with a smiling, almost openly scoffing look, “you’ve got to keep your nerve when the market starts to go places. Now’s when you can make something.”
“I’d get out while the getting’s good.”
“No, you shouldn’t lose your head like this. It’s obvious to me what the mechanism is back in the Chicago market. There’s a short supply of December rye. Look, it’s just gone up another quarter. We should ride it.”
“I’m losing my taste for the gamble,” said Wilhelm. “You can’t feel safe when it goes up so fast. It’s liable to come down just as quick.”
Dryly, as though he were dealing with a child, Tamkin told him in a tone of tiring patience, “Now listen, Tommy. I have it diagnosed right. If you wish I should sell I can give the sell order. But this is the difference between healthiness and pathology. One is objective, doesn’t change his mind every minute, enjoys the risk element. But that’s not the neurotic character. The neurotic character—”
“Damn it, Tamkin!” said Wilhelm roughly. “Cut that out. I don’t like it. Leave my character out of consideration. Don’t pull any more of that stuff on me. I tell you I don’t like it.”
Tamkin therefore went no further; he backed down. “I meant,” he said, softer, “that as a salesman you are basically an artist type. The seller is in the visionary sphere of the business function. And then you’re an actor, too.”
“No matter what type I am—” An angry and yet weak sweetness rose into Wilhelm’s throat. He coughed as though he had the flu. It was twenty years since he had appeared on the screen as an extra. He blew the bagpipes in a film called
“Something stuck in your throat?” said Tamkin. “I think maybe you are too disturbed to think clearly. You should try some of my ‘here-and-now’ mental exercises. It stops you from thinking so much about the future and the past and cuts down confusion.”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes,” said Wilhelm, his eyes fixed on December rye.
“Nature only knows one thing, and that’s the present. Present, present, eternal present, like a big, huge, giant wave — colossal, bright and beautiful, full of life and death climbing into the sky, standing in the seas. You must go along with the actual, the Here-and-Now, the glory—”
…chest weakness, Wilhelm’s recollection went on. Margaret nursed him. They had had two rooms of furniture, which was later seized. She sat on the bed and read to him. He made her read for days, and she read stones, poetry, everything in the house. He felt dizzy, stifled when he tried to smoke. They had him wear a flannel vest.
Why did he remember that? Why?
“You have to pick out something that’s in the actual, immediate present moment,” said Tamkin. “And say to yourself here-and-now, here-and-now, here-and-now. ‘Where am I?’ ‘Here.’ ‘When is it?’ ‘Now.’ Take an object or a person. Anybody. ‘Here and now I see a person.’ ‘Here and now I see a man.’ ‘Here and now I see a man sitting on a chair.’ Take me, for instance. Don’t let your mind wander. ‘Here and now I see a man in a brown suit. Here and now I see a corduroy shirt.’ You have to narrow it down, one item at a time, and not let your imagination shoot ahead. Be in the present. Grasp the hour, the moment, the instant.”
Is he trying to hypnotize or con me? Wilhelm wondered. To take my mind off selling? But even if I’m back at seven hundred bucks, then where am I?
As if in prayer, his lids coming down with raised veins, frayed out, on his significant eyes, Tamkin said, “‘Here and now I see a button. Here and now I see the thread that sews the button. Here and now I see the green thread.’” Inch by inch he contemplated himself in order to show Wilhelm how calm it would make him. But Wilhelm was hearing Margaret’s voice as she read, somewhat unwillingly,
Then Mr. Rappaport’s old hand pressed his thigh, and he said, “What’s my wheat? Those damn guys are blocking the way. I can’t see.”
VI
Rye was still ahead when they went out to lunch, and lard was holding its own.
They ate in the cafeteria with the gilded front. There was the same art inside as outside. The food looked sumptuous. Whole fishes were framed like pictures with carrots, and the salads were like terraced landscapes or like Mexican pyramids; slices of lemon and onion and radishes were like sun and moon and stars; the cream pies were about a foot thick and the cakes swollen as if sleepers had baked them in their dreams.
“What’ll you have?” said Tamkin.
“Not much. I ate a big breakfast. I’ll find a table. Bring me some yogurt and crackers and a cup of tea. I don’t want to spend much time over lunch.”
Tamkin said, “You’ve got to eat.”
Finding an empty place at this hour was not easy. The old people idled and gossiped over their coffee. The elderly ladies were rouged and mascaraed and hennaed and used blue hair rinse and eye shadow and wore costume jewelry, and many of them were proud and stared at you with expressions that did not belong to their age. Were there no longer any respectable old ladies who knitted and cooked and looked after their grandchildren? Wilhelm’s grandmother had dressed him in a sailor suit and danced him on her knee, blew on the porridge for him and said, “Admiral, you must eat.” But what was the use of remembering this so late in the day?
He managed to find a table, and Dr. Tamkin came along with a tray piled with plates and cups. He had Yankee pot roast, purple cabbage, potatoes, a big slice of watermelon, and two cups of coffee. Wilhelm could not even swallow his yogurt. His chest pained him still.
At once Tamkin involved him in a lengthy discussion. Did he do it to stall Wilhelm and prevent him from selling out the rye — or to recover the ground lost when he had made Wilhelm angry by hints about the neurotic character? Or did he have no purpose except to talk?
“I think you worry a lot too much about what your wife and your father will say. Do they matter so much?”
