The Dice Man (36 page)

Dr. Rhinehart was beaming.

`I see no reason to let him go on,' said Dr. Mann quietly, shrugging his right shoulder in an-effort to dislodge Dr: Moon.

`I think perhaps you're right,' said Dr. Weinburger, neatening the crumpled papers in front of him.

`Dice therapy and money,' Dr. Rhinehart said, and began his intent pacing again. `Since Freud's pioneer work, not much has been done with the problem of money. As you gentlemen know, Freud associated money with excrement and argued shrewdly that "Tightness" was an effort to withhold excrement, to maintain, in his immortal phrase, "an Immaculate Anus."

`Dr. Rhinehart,' interrupted Dr. Weinburger, `if yon don't mind, I think . 'Two more minutes,' said Dr. Rhinehart, glancing at his watch. `Freud postulated that a neurotic will find outflow of money, excrement, time or energy a loss, a sullying of the soul, or, more precisely, the anus. Obviously any such effort to withhold is doomed to failure. As Erich Fromm has so acutely 'observed: "It is the tragedy inherent in the fate of man that he shit."

'Dr. Rhinehart's eyes gleamed, in, his solemn face. 'I forget the reference.'

`Obviously the old therapies couldn't solve this dilemma. Whereas conventional psychoanalysis sees the desire for an Immaculate Anus as neurotic and counterproductive, we maintain that the desire, like all desires, is good, and causes trouble only when followed too consistently. The individual must come to embrace, in effect, both the Immaculate Anus and the excreted lumps of ford.'

He was standing in front of Dr. Cobblestone and leaned on the table in front of him with both immaculately tailored arms. `We look not for moderation in the excretory functions, but a joyful variety: a random alteration, as it were, of constipation and diarrhea, with, I suppose, sporadic bursts of regularity.'

`Dr. Rhinehart, please said Dr. Cobblestone.

`Figuratively speaking, of course. In curing a man of compulsive worry about money we begin by giving him simple dice exercises which require him to spend or not spend small amounts of money at the whim of a Die and which make him let the Die determine how the money is spent. Slowly but surely we increase the stakes.'

`That's all,' said Dr. Weinburger, standing and confronting Dr. Rhinehart, who moved over and stopped opposite him. `You've had your say; we've heard enough.'

Dr Rhinehart glanced at his watch and then pulled a die from his pocket and glanced at it.

`You'll never get him to stop,' said Dr. Mann quietly.

`I guess I'm done,' said Dr. Rhinehart, and he walked back and resumed his seat. Dr. Ecstein was staring at the floor.

Dr. Weinburger again made motions of trying to neaten up the pile of crumpled papers in front of him and cleared his throat noisily.

`Well, gentlemen,' he said, `I suppose while Dr. Rhinehart is still here I ought to ask if any of you have any questions for him before we proceed to the vote.'

He looked nervously first to his right where Dr. Peerman was grinning sickly and Dr. Cobblestone was staring sternly at the head of his cane between his legs. Neither responded. Dr. Weinburger then looked nervously to his left where Dr. Moon, his breath coming in even harsher and more uneven gasps than earlier, was beginning a slow arc from Dr. Mann toward the chairman.

Dr. Mann said very quietly `The man is no longer human.'

`I beg your pardon?' said Dr. Weinburger.

'The man is no longer human.'

`Oh. Yes.' Dr. Weinburger stood up. `Then if there are no further questions, I must ask Dr. Rhinehart to leave the room so that we may proceed to a vote on the issue before us.'

`I'm inhuman you say?' said Dr. Rhinehart quietly, remaining in his chair next to Dr. Ecstein. `Big deal, I'm inhuman. But with the human pattern such as it is these days can the word inhuman constitute an insult? Considered in the light of normal, everyday, garden variety human cruelty in the marketplace, the ghetto, the family, in war, your inhuman refers to the abnormality of my actions, not their level of moral depravity.'

`Dr. Rhinehart,' Dr. Weinburger interrupted, still standing, `would you please `Come on, I've only been talking nonsense an hour, give me a chance.'

He stared wordlessly at Dr. Weinburger until the chairman slowly lowered himself into his chair.

`The suffering our dice-dictated actions causes is clearly nothing as compared man for man to that caused by rational, civilized man. Dicepeople are amateurs at evil. What seems to disturb you guys is that others are sometimes manipulated not by an ego-motivated me but by a dice-motivated me. It's the seeming gratuity of the occasional suffering we cause that shocks. You prefer purposeful, consistent, solidly structured suffering. The idea that we create love because the dice order us to, that we express love, that we feel love, all because of accident, shatters the fabric of your illusions about the nature of man.'

When Dr. Weinburger began to rise in his chair again Dr. Rhinehart simply raised his huge right arm and continued calmly `But what is this nature of man you're so gung-ho to defend? Look at yourselves. Whatever happened to the real inventor in you? to the lover? or the adventurer? or the saint? or the woman? You killed them. Look at yourselves and ask: "Is this the Image of God in which man was created?"

Dr. Rhinehart looked from Peerman to Cobblestone to Weinburger to Moon to Mann. `Blasphemy. God creates, experiments, rides the wind. He doesn't wallow in the accumulated feces of his past' Dr. Rhinehart put two sheets of paper back into his briefcase and stood up.

`I'm going now, and you can vote. But remember, you are all potentially chameleons of the spirit, and thus of all the illusions that rob men of their divinity this is the cruelest; to call the rocklike burdensome shell of "character" and "individuality" man's greatest development. It's like praising a boat for its anchor.'

Dr. Rhinehart walked away alone to the door.

`A genuine fool,' he said. `A few genuine fools. A few a generation, a few per nation. Until the discovery of the Die it was too much to ask.'

With a final smile at Dr. Ecstein, he left the room.

[Being a Special Die-Dictated Dramatization of the Judicial Deliberations of the Executive Committee of PANY as

Recreated from the Tape Recording and Testimony of Dr. Jacob Ecstein.]
For several moments the five members of the committee sat in silence, broken only by the harsh, uneven 'breathing of the sleeping Dr. Moon. Doctors Weinburger, Cobblestone and Mann, were all staring at the door which had closed behind Dr. Rhinehart. Dr. Peerman broke the silence `I believe we should conclude our business: 'Ah. Ah. Ah, yes,' said Dr. Weinburger. `The vote. We must have the vote.'

But he remained staring at the door. Thank God, he's insane,' he added.

`The vote,' repeated Dr. Peerman in his shrill voice.

`Yes, of course. We are now voting on Dr. Peerman's motion that our committee expel Dr. Rhinehart for the reasons listed and request that the AMA consider taking action against him as well. Dr. Peerman?'

`I cast my vote in favor of my motion,' he said solemnly to the chairman.

`Dr. Cobblestone?'

The old doctor was fingering nervously the cane held erect between his legs and staring blankly at the empty chair of Dr. Rhinehart.

`I vote aye,' he said neutrally.

`Two votes to condemn,' announced Dr. Weinburger. `Dr. Mann?'

Dr. Mann shrugged his right shoulder violently and jarred Dr. Moon into a more or less vertical position, Moon's eyes flaming open briefly and erratically.

`I still think we ought to have asked Dr. Rhinehart quietly to resign,' said Dr. Mann. `I make a pro forma vote of no.'

`I understand, Tim,' said Dr. Weinburger sympathetically. `And you, Dr. Moon?'

Dr. Moon's body was balanced erect, and his eyelids slowly rose, revealing the red coals of his dying eyes. His face looked as if it had suffered all the miseries of every human that had ever lived.

`Dr. Moon; do you vote yes to the motion to expel this man we've been listening to, or do you vote no in order to permit him to continue?'

Dr. Moon's fierce red eyes seemed the only things alive in his wrinkled, ravaged face, but they were staring at nothing, or at the past or at everything. His mouth was open; he drooled.

`Dr. Moon?' repeated Dr. Weinburger a third time.

Slowly, so slowly that it must have taken thirty or forty seconds for him to complete the motion, Dr. Moon raised his two arms up over his head, feebly closed the palms of his hands into a half-fist, and then, mouth still open, dropped them with a crash onto the table in front of him.

'NO!' he thundered.

There was a shocked silence, broken only by the explosive gasps of Dr. Moon's now totally sporadic breathing.

`Would you care to explain your vote?'

Dr. Weinburger asked gently after a while. Dr. Moon's body was beginning to slump and slide toward Dr. Mann's shoulder again and his fierce, all-seeing eyes were now only half open.

`My vote's obvious,' he said weakly. `Get on with it'

Dr Weinburger stood up with a dignified smile on his face.

`The vote on the motion to expel Dr. Rhinehart being tied at two to two, the chairman is obliged to cast his vote to break the tie.'

He paused briefly and poked formally at the crumpled papers in front of him. `I vote yes. Consequently, by a vote of three to two, Dr. Rhinehart is expelled from PANY. A letter will be sent to -'

`Point of order,' came Dr. Moon's weak voice, his eyes now open just a slit, as if permitting people only the tiniest of glances into his red inferno.

`Beg pardon?' said the surprised chairman.

"Cording to our, bylaws . . . man presenting charges 'gainst colleague can't . . . vote . .. on motion to accept . . . charges.'

`I'm afraid I don't understan-' `Created bylaw m'self in thirty-one,' continued Dr. Moon with a gasp. He seemed to be trying to push himself away from Dr. Mann's shoulder but lacked the strength. `Peerman brought charges. Peerman can't vote.'

No one spoke. There was only the hoarse explosive rattle of Dr. Moon's occasional breath.

Dr. Mann finally said in a very quiet voice `1n that case the vote is two to two.'

'Vote's two to one for acquittal,' said Dr. Moon and, after a desperate, hollow, rattling intake of air, he finished `Chairman of committee can't vote except to break ties.'

`Dr. Moon, sir,' said Dr. Weinburger weakly, bracing himself against the table to keep himself from fainting: `Could you please consider changing your vote or at least explaining it?'

The red coals of Dr. Moon's dying eyes blazed forth one last time from the face which looked as if it had suffered all the miseries of every human that had ever lived.

`M'vote's obvious,' he said.

Dr. Weinburger began re-crumpling the papers which he had finished neatening in front of him.

`Dr. Moon, sir,' he said again weakly. 'Would you consider changing your vote in order to ... simplify ... to simplify ... Dr. Moon! Dr. Moon!' But the silence in the room was total.

Was total.

Dr. Moon's death in the line of duty was greeted with mixed reviews in the psychiatric world of New York as was my momentary escape from the fate I so obviously deserved. I quietly resigned from PANY, but Dr. Weinburger wrote a personal letter to the president of the AMA; my removal from the elite sections of civilization continued its slow, rational, bureaucratic course.
They probably would have kept me locked up in Kolb Clinic forever, but Jake Ecstein was my psychiatrist and unlike most other ambitious, successful doctors, Jake listened only to Jake. Thus, when I seemed perfectly normal (it was back to Normalcy Month) he ordered them to let me out. It seemed an unreasonable thing to do, even to me.

`Luke, you're a quack,' Fred Boyd said to me, smiling and looking out our kitchen windows toward the old barn and poison ivy fields.

`Mmmm,' I said, as Lil moved past our table back outdoors to get the groceries.

`A Phi Beta Kappa quack, a brilliant quack, but a quack,' he skid.

`Thanks, Fred. You're kind.'

`The trouble is,' he said, dunking a somewhat stale doughnut into his lukewarm coffee, `that some of it makes sense. That confuses the issue. Why can't you just be a complete fool or charlatan?'

`Huh. Never thought of that. I'll have to let the Die consider it' Lil and Miss Welish came in from the yard with the two children clamoring after them, clawing at the bags of groceries Lil carried in her arms. When Lil took out a box of cookies and distributed three each to the two children, they wandered back outdoors, arguing halfheartedly about who had the largest.

Miss Welish, dressed in white tennis shirts and blouse, bounced girlishly and a bit chubbily across the floor to hustle up some fresh coffee and deliver the fresh pastry we'd been promised. Fred watched her, sighed, yawned and tipped way back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head.

`And where's it all going to end, I wonder?' he said.

`What?' I asked.

`Your dice therapy business: `The Die only knows.'

`Seriously. What do you think you'll achieve?'

`Try it yourself,' I said.

`I have. You know I have. And it's fun; I admit it. But my God, if I took it seriously I'd have to change completely.'

`Precisely.'

`But I like the way I am: `So do I, but I'm getting bored with you,' I said. `It's variety and unpredictability we like in our friends. Those capable of the unexpected we cherish; they capture us because we're intrigued by how they "work."

After a while we learn how they work, and our boredom resumes. You've got to change, Fred.'

'No, he hasn't,' said Lil, bringing us lemonade, a Sara Lee Coffee Cake and a bottle of vitamins and sitting at the end of the table. `I liked Luke the way he was before, and I want Fred to stay just the way he is.'

`It's just not so, Lil. You were bored and unhappy with me before I became the Dice Man. Now you're entertained and unhappy. That's progress.'

Lil shook her head. `If it weren't for Fred, I don't think I'd have survived, but he's made me see your behavior for what it is: the sick rebellion of an elephantine child.'