had taken on a girth almost commensurable to Kronski's. A middle-aged man now with a row of black, charred teeth. After a few words he began to talk about his son—the oldest boy, who was now in college and a member of the football team. He had transferred all his hopes to the son. I was disgusted. In vain did I try to get some inkling about his own life. No, he preferred to talk about his son.
«You must come up and see us soon.» (He was trying to hold me.) «Let's have a good old session together. You know how I love talking!» He gave out one of those cachinating snorts as of yore.)
«Where do you live now?» he added, clutching my arm.
I took a piece of paper out of my pocket and wrote clown a false address and telephone number. I thought to myself, the next time we meet it will probably be in limbo.
As I walked away I suddenly realized that he had evinced no interest in what had happened to me all these years. He knew I had been abroad, had written a few books. «I've read some of your stuff, you know,» he had remarked. And then he had laughed confusedly, as if to say: «But I know you, you old rapscallion... you're not taking
Had we begun to swap experience we might have had an enjoyable talk. We might have understood one another better than we ever had before. If he had only given me a chance I might have demonstrated that the Arthur who had failed was just as dear to me as the promising young man whom I had once idolized. We were both rebels, in our way. And we had both struggled to make a new world.
«Of course I still believe in it (Communism),» he had said in parting. He said it as though he were sorry to admit that the movement were not big enough to include him with all his idiosyncrasies. In the same way I could imagine him saying to himself that he still believed in mvisic, or in the outdoor life, or in ju-jitsu. I wondered if he realized what he had done by abandoning one road after the other. If he had stopped anywhere along the line and fought his way through, life would have been worth while. Even if he had only become a champion wrestler! I remembered the night he had induced me to accompany him to a bout between Earl Cad-dock and Strangler Lewis. (And another occasion when we had gone together to witness the Dempsey-Carpentier fight.) He was a poet then. He saw two gods in mortal combat. He knew that there was more to it than a tussle to the finish between two brutes. He talked about these great figures of the arena as he would have talked about the great composers or the great dramatists. He was a conscious part of the mob which attends these spectacles. He was like a Greek in the days of Euripides. He was an artist applauding other artists. He was at his very best in the amphitheatre.
I recalled another occasion, when we were waiting on the platform of a railway station. Suddenly, while pacing back and forth, he grabs my arm and says: «By God, Henry, do you know who that is?
I could hear Dempsey's squeaky, piping voice answering the greeting. Dempsey, who overtowered Arthur Raymond, looked at that moment like a child.
It was Arthur Raymond who was bold and aggressive. He didn't seem the least bit awed by Dempsey's presence. I almost expected him to give the champion a pat on the shoulder.
«He's like a fine race horse,» said Arthur Raymond, his voice tense with emotion. «A most sensitive creature.» He was probably thinking of himself, of how he would appear to others should he suddenly become world's champion. «An intelligent chap too. A man couldn't fight in that colorful style unless he possessed a high degree of intelligence. He's a fine fellow really. Just a big boy, you know. He actually blushed, do you know that?» On and on he went, rhapsodizing over his hero.
But it was about Earl Caddock that he said the most wonderful things. Earl Caddock, I think, was even closed to his ideal than Dempsey. «The man of a thousand holds,» that's how Caddock was called. A god-like body, a little too frail, it would seem, for those protracted, gruelling bouts which the ordeal of wrestling demands. I remember vividly how he looked that night beside the burlier, heftier Strangler Lewis. Arthur Raymond was certain that Lewis would win—but his heart was with Earl Caddock. He screamed his lungs out, urging Caddock on. Afterwards, in a Jewish delicatessen over on the East Side, he rehearsed the bout in detail. He had an extraordinary memory when it concerned anything he was passionate about. I think I enjoyed the bout even more, in retrospect, seeing it through his eyes. In fact, he talked about it so marvelously that the next day I sat down and wrote a prose poem about two wrestlers. I brought it with me to the dentist's the following day. He was a wrestling fan also. The dentist thought it was a chef-d'oeuvre. The result was that I never got my tooth filled. I was taken upstairs to meet the family—they were from Odessa—and before I knew what was happening, I had become engrossed in a game of chess which lasted until two in the morning. And then began a friendship which lasted until all my teeth had been treated— fourteen of fifteen months it dragged out. When the bill came I vanished. It was not until five or six years later, I guess, that we met again, and then under rather peculiar circumstances. But of that later....
Freud, Freud.... A lot of things might be laid at his door. There is Dr. Kronski now, some ten years after our semantic life at Riverside Drive. Big as porpoise, puffing like a walrus, emitting talk like a locomotive emits steam. An injury to the head has disregulated his entire system. He has become a glandular anomaly, a study in cross- purposes.
We had not seen each other for some years. We meet again in New York. Hectic confabulations. He learns that I have had more than a speaking acquaintance with psychoanalysis during my absence abroad. I mention certain figures in that world who are well known to him—from their writings. He's amazed that I should know them, have been accepted by them—as a friend. He begins to wonder if he hadn't made a mistake about his old friend Henry Miller. He wants to talk about it, talk and talk and talk. I refuse. That impresses him. He knows that talking is his weakness, his vice.
After a few meetings I realize that he is hatching an idea. He can't just take it for granted that I know something about psycho-analysis— he wants proofs. «What are you doing now... in New York?» he asks. I answer that I am doing nothing, really. «Aren't you writing?»
«No.» A long pause. Then it comes out. An experiment... a grand experiment. I'm the man to do it. He will explain.
The long and short of it is that he would like me to experiment with some of his patients—his ex-patients, I should say, because he has given up his practice. He's certain I can do as good as the next fellow—maybe better. «I won't tell them you're a writer,» he says. «You
I smiled. It didn't seem bad at all, at first blush. As a matter of fact, I had long toyed with the very idea. I jumped at it. Settled then. To-morrow, at four o'clock, he would introduce me to one of his patients.
That's how it began. Before very long I had about seven or eight patients. They seemed to be pleased with my efforts. They told Dr. Kronski so. He of course had expected it to turn out thus. He thought he might become an analyst himself. Why not? I had to confess I could see no reason against it. Any one with charm, intelligence and sensitivity might become an analyst. There were healers long before Mary Baker Eddy or Sigmund Freud were heard of. Common sense played its role too.
«To be an analyst, however,» I said, not intending it as a serious remark, «one should first be analyzed himself, you know that.»
«How about yow?» he said.
I pretended I had been analyzed. I told him Otto Rank had done the job.
«You never told me that,» he said, again visibly impressed. He had an unholy respect for Otto Rank.
«How long did it last?» he asked.
«About three months. Rank doesn't believe in prolonged analyses, I suppose you know.»
«That's true,» he said, growing very thoughtful.
A moment later he popped it. «What about analyzing
«Yes,» I said slowly, feeling my way along, «per-haps we might even explode that stupid prejudice. After all, Freud had to analyze Rank, didn't he?» (This was a lie, because Rank had never been analyzed, even by Father Freud.)
