Angelica's Grotto

45 Last Session

In matters of wardrobe Klein was not burdened by his professional aestheticism; he was ordinarily to be seen in jeans and T-shirts when it was warm, jeans and polo-necks and various outdoor-man jackets when it was cold. Large black medically-bespoke boots were what he walked around in and he always wore some kind of hat to shade his eyes, as often as not a sort of bush-ranger affair in green canvas. Today, however, he sported a black shirt, tan linen jacket, and his hat was a Death-in-Venice panama.

‘You look different,’ said Doctor DeVere.

Klein shrugged. ‘Things change,’ he said.

‘What things?’

‘I had a heart attack, I’ve been in hospital, and my inner voice has come back. All the way.’

‘Sorry to hear about the heart attack. How are you now?’

‘I’m fine; it wasn’t a big one. They did a balloon job on the right coronary artery and put in a stent and now I can walk a lot better than I did before.’

‘What brought it on?’

‘The auction was a little too much excitement for me.’

‘Ah, the Redon! You’ve sold it then?’

‘Yes, it’s gone.’

‘Did it fetch a good price?’

‘A million and a quarter.’

Dr DeVere whistled. ‘Crikey! I’m not surprised that you had a heart attack. Unless, of course, you’re accustomed to dealing with that kind of money.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Will you be going ahead with your plan to fund Melissa’s study?’

‘Oh yes. We still have to work out the details. She visited me in hospital after the auction.’

‘Pleasant visit?’

‘Very.’ Klein couldn’t help grinning.

‘Cheered you up, did it?’

You don’t have to tell him everything, said Oannes. ‘We had a nice chat,’ Klein said to DeVere. ‘She said she could be bought.’

‘Did she! Is that how you think of the funding?’

‘I’ve told you before this that I think her project is worthwhile. She appreciates my support and I appreciate her appreciation. Everything is business in one way or another, Leon.’

‘That’s one way of looking at life, I guess. You said you’ve got your inner voice back. Is it the same inner voice you had before?’

‘No, it’s Oannes now. I’ve told you about the last time I heard my old inner voice: it was that day in the Fulham Road when I was trying to walk fast enough to get a better look at a woman who was walking much faster. I said to myself, “One day you’ll drop dead while something like that walks away from you.” Then I said to myself in a different voice, “Well, that’s life, innit.” And that was the voice of Oannes.’

‘So that was the transition, and since then it’s been only Oannes, right?’

‘Right, but he limited himself to one-liners until we started having real conversations in hospital.’

‘When did that happen?’

‘It was in the middle of the night, the same day Melissa visited me in the afternoon. He said, “Harold Klein, millionaire,” then we talked about money and Melissa and I was doing it in my head, not whispering: talking with an inner voice the way I used to before all this began.’

‘Not quite the way you used to. Did the old inner voice say things like “Madness is the natural state?”’

‘Certainly I’ve changed. People do change, you know.’

‘Let’s go back to the beginning of this whole thing. How would you describe the losing of your inner voice? What would you say was happening in you back then?’

‘My self stopped talking to me. I lost contact with myself.’

‘Why do you think you lost contact with yourself?’

‘All of me wasn’t going in the same direction; I was drifting apart.’

‘What would you say the different directions were?’

‘Partly I wanted to loosen up and partly I didn’t.’

‘When did you first visit Angelica’s Grotto?’

‘It was after our first session.’

‘Afternoon? Evening?’

‘Evening. I didn’t feel like working; I was having a drink and listening to Connie Francis. She was singing “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool”. I went to Yahoo and told it to search for Sexuality.’

‘Were you feeling like somebody’s fool?’

‘I was feeling like anybody’s fool.’

‘So you went to Yahoo. Your Oannes, is he perhaps a bit of a yahoo?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘And Oannes is …?’

‘An aspect of myself.’

‘Can you say more?’

‘He’s an aspect of myself I’m quite comfortable with. When I talk to myself as Oannes there’s a lot less bullshit than there used to be.’

‘And a lot more sex.’

‘Well, I’m putting my money where my mouth is, and vice versa.’

‘And is all of you going in the same direction now?’

‘Looks that way to me.’

Watching Klein, DeVere was reminded of cop movies in which a guilty man with a foolproof alibi sat in his chair the same way Klein was sitting in his. ‘So,’ he said, ‘how would you assess your present situation?’

Klein thought about that for a while. ‘You’ve seen in amusement arcades a brightly lit glass case full of little prizes, and you have to manoeuvre a pair of claws to pick up what you can?’

‘Yes, I’ve seen those.’

‘Well, I’ve done the best I could with my claws.’

‘What exactly have you picked up?’

‘Little treats, little bits of Melissa-time.’

‘No more than that?’

‘Treats and bits are all I can manage — the whole Melissa is beyond my grasp.’

‘Would you want the whole Melissa?’

‘Actually, I like it the way things are now.’

‘You think that’s the best you can do?’

‘It’s the best I want to do; it feels right.’

‘Why do you think that is?’

‘Let me ask you a question: what do you think your function as a psychologist is?’

‘Helping people to work through their problems.’

‘And who decides when they’ve done that?’

‘Usually it’s the patient and the psychologist together.’

‘What if they don’t have the same opinion?’

‘Can you elaborate?’

‘Take Bruno Schulz’s little eunuch, grovelling at the bedside of the woman he can’t have while a stallion licks her bottom — would you say he’s worked through his problems?’

‘I very much doubt it.’

‘But maybe that’s how he wants things to be; maybe he likes that arrangement.’

‘And what about you? Is that an arrangement you’d like?’

‘You’re a lot younger than I am, Leon. Maybe how you are now isn’t how you’ll be when you’re my age.’

‘You’re not answering my question.’

‘Look, in these sessions you’ve had me putting all kinds of things into words and you’ve helped me get to where I don’t have to put everything into words any more. I know the way I am now probably isn’t your idea of a good way to be but it feels right for me, OK? And from here on out I think I can go it alone.’

‘Are you saying that you want these sessions to stop?’

‘That’s what I’m saying.’

DeVere ran his thumbnail down the outside edge of the notes stacked in Klein’s file. ‘It’s your choice of course, but I have to say that I think there’s still work to be done.’

‘There’s always work to be done but it doesn’t always take two people to do it.’

‘Then all I can say is, good luck and I hope you won’t be sorry.’

‘I feel lucky already, Leon, and I’ve given up feeling sorry.’