Lie down, then, on the soft couch which the analyst provides, and try to think up something different. The analyst has endless time and patience; every minute you detain him means money in his pocket. He is like God, in a sense—the God of your own creation. Whether you whine, howl, beg, weep, implore, cajole, pray or curse—he listens. He is just a big ear minus a sympathetic nervous system. He is impervious to everything but truth. If you think it pays to fool him then fool him. Who will be the loser? If you think he can help you, and not yourself, then stick to him until you rot. He has nothing to lose. But if you realize that he is not a god but a human being like yourself, with worries, defects, ambitions, frailties, that he is not the repository of an all-encompassing wisdom but a wanderer, like yourself, along the path, perhaps you will cease pouring it out like a sewer, however melodious it may sound to your ears, and rise up on your own two legs and sing with your own God-given voice. To confess, to whine, to complain, to commiserate, always demands a toll. To sing it doesn’t cost you a penny. Not only does it cost nothing—you actually enrich others. Sing the praises of the Lord, it is enjoined. Aye, sing out! Sing out, O Master-builder! Sing out, glad warrior! But, you quibble, how can I sing when the world is crumbling, when all about me is bathed in blood and tears? Do you realize that the martyrs sang when they were being burned at the stake? They saw nothing crumbling, they heard no shrieks of pain. They sang because they were full of faith. Who can demolish faith? Who can wipe out joy? Men have tried, in every age. But they have not succeeded. Joy and faith are inherent in the universe. In growth there is pain and struggle; in accomplishment there is joy and exuberance; in fulfillment there is peace and serenity. Between the planes and spheres of existence, terrestrial and super-terrestrial, there are ladders and lattices. The one who mounts sings. He is made drunk and exalted by unfolding vistas. He ascends sure-footedly, thinking not of what lies below, should he slip and lose his grasp, but of what lies ahead. Everything lies ahead. The way is endless, and the farther one reaches the more the road opens up. The bogs and quagmires, the marshes and sink-holes, the pits and snares, are all in the mind. They lurk in waiting, ready to swallow one up the moment one ceases to advance. The phantasmal world is the world which has not been fully conquered over. It is the world of the past, never of the future. To move forward clinging to the past is like dragging a ball and chain. The prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over. We are all guilty of crime, the great crime of not living life to the full. But we are all potentially free. We can stop thinking of what we have failed to do and do whatever lies within our power. What these powers that are in us may be no one has truly dared to imagine. That they are infinite we will realize the day we admit to ourselves that imagination is everything. Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything God-like about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.
15
Everybody took Mona and Rebecca for sisters. Outwardly they seemed to have everything in common; inwardly there wasn’t the slightest link between them. Rebecca, who never denied her Jewish blood, lived completely in the present; she was normal, healthy, intelligent, ate with gusto, laughed heartily, talked easily and, I imagine, fucked well and slept well. She was thoroughly adapted, thoroughly anchored, able to live on any plane and make the best of it. She was everything that a man could desire in a wife. She was a real female. In her presence the average American woman looked like a bundle of defects.
Her special quality was her earthiness. Born in Southern Russia, having been spared the horrors of ghetto life, she reflected the grandeur of the simple Russian people among whom she grew up. Her spirit was large and flexible, robust and supple at the same time. She was a Communist by instinct, because her nature was simple, wholesome and all of a piece.
Though she was the daughter of a rabbi, she had emancipated herself at an early age. From her father she had inherited that acumen and integrity which from time immemorial have given to the pious Jew that distinctive axira of purity and strength. Meekness and hypocrisy were never the attributes of the devout Jew; their weakness, as with the Chinese, has been an undue reverence for the written word. For them, the Word has a significance almost unknown to the Gentile. When they become exalted they glow like letters of fire.
As for Mona, it was impossible to guess what her origins were. For a long time she had maintained that she was born in New Hampshire and that she had been educated in a New England college. She could have passed for a Portuguese, a Basque, a Roumanian gypsy, a Hungarian, a Georgian, anything she chose to make you believe. Her English was impeccable and, to most observers, without the slightest trace of accent. She might have been born anywhere, because the English she spoke was obviously an English she had mastered in order to frustrate all such inquiries as relate to origins and antecedents. In her presence the room vibrated. She had her own wave length: it was short, powerful, disruptive. It served to break down other transmissions, especially those which threatened to effect real communication with her. She played like lightning over a storm-tossed sea.
There was something disturbing to her in the atmosphere created by the coming together of such strong individualities as composed the new menage. She felt a challenge which she was not quite able to meet. Her passport was in order but her luggage excited suspicion. At the end of every encounter she had to reassemble her forces, but it was evident, even to herself, that her forces were becoming frayed and diminished. Alone in our little room—the cubicle—I would nurse her wounds and endeavor to arm her for the next encounter. I had to pretend, of course, that she had acquitted herself admirably. Often I would rehearse some of the statements she had made, altering them subtly or amplifying them in an unexpected way, in order to give her the clue she was searching for. I tried never to humiliate her by forcing her to ask a direct question. I knew just where the ice was thin and I skated about these dangerous zones with the adroitness and agility of a professional. In this way I patiently endeavored to fill in those gaps which were distressingly blatant in one who was supposed to have graduated from such a venerable institution of learning as Wellesley.
It was a strange, awkward and embarrassing game. I was surprised to detect in myself the germination of a new sentiment towards her: pity. It was incomprehensible to me that, forced to show her hand, she should not have taken refuge in frankness. She knew that I knew, but she would insist on keeping up pretences. Why? Why with me? What had she to fear? That I had detected her weakness had in no way diminished my love. On the contrary, it had increased it. Her secret had become mine, and in protecting her I was protecting myself also. Could she not see that in arousing my pity she was only strengthening the bond between us? But perhaps that was not her great concern; perhaps she took for granted that the bond would grow with the years.
To make herself invulnerable—that was her obsessive concern. Detecting that, my pity expanded immeasurably. It was almost as if I had suddenly discovered that she was a cripple. That happens now and then, when two people fall in love. And if it is love which has united two people then a discovery of that sort serves only to intensify the love. One is not only eager to overlook the duplicity of the unfortunate one, one makes a violent and unnatural effort towards identification. «Let me carry the burden of your sweet defect!» That is the cry of the love-sick heart. Only an ingrained egotist can evade the shackles imposed by an unequal match. The one who loves thrills at the thought of greater tests; he begs mutely that he be permitted to put his hand in the flame. And if the adorable cripple insists on
