Seize the Day
Detailed Summary
Section 1
Tommy Wilhelm was in hotel Gloriana in New York. In the morning he went down to the lobby to collect his mail and have breakfast. Most of the hotel guests were old and retired. If the weather was good, they filled the benches about the tiny parks and along the subway gratings from Verdi Square to Columbia University. They crowded the shops, cafeterias, the dime stores, the reading rooms, and clubrooms. Among these men, Wilhelm felt out of place. He was a contrast to them; he was in his mid-forties, large and blond, with big shoulders, his back heavy and strong.
After breakfast the old guests sat down on the green leather armchairs and sofas in the lobby and began to gossip and looked into the papers; they had nothing to do but wait out the day. But Wilhelm was used to an active life and liked to go out energetically in the morning. And for several months, because he had no position, he had kept up his morale by rising early; he was in the lobby at eight o’clock. The getting out had in itself become the chief business. But he had realized that he could not keep this up much longer.
He was aware that his routine was about to break up. Nevertheless, he followed his daily course and crossed the lobby. Rubin, an agent at the newsstand was lost in reverie. He was gazing at Hotel Ansonia, which was visible from his corner. This hotel was founded by Stanford White. It looked like a baroque palace from Prague or Munich. Black television antennae were densely planted on its round summits. Rubin praised Wilhelm’s features when the latter approached him. Wilhelm could not believe it. He saw his reflection in the glass cupboard full of cigar boxes. He thought that he did not look too good. A wide wrinkle like a bracket sign was written upon his forehead, upon the point between his brows and there were patches of brown on his dark blond skin. He began to be half-amused at the shadow of his own troubled, desirous eyes. He thought him to be a fair-haired hippopotamus. He thought that he should have done hard labor all his life. He had put forth plenty of effort, but that was not the same as working hard. Early in the nineteen-thirties, because of his striking looks, he had been considered star material; he had gone to Hollywood. There, for seven years, he had tried stubbornly to become a screen artist. Long before that time, his ambition had ended, but through pride and through laziness he had remained in California. At last, he turned to other things, but the persistence and defeats had unfitted him somehow for business, and then it was too late to go into one of the professions. He had been slow to mature and he had lost ground. He considered his good appearance the cause of his failure. Rubin asked him why he, a regular gambler, was absent from the gin game of the previous night. He said that he had to miss it. For the last few weeks he played gin every day but there were no gains. There were losses. He was tired of losing.
Then there comes a shift in the narration of the novel; the past events of Wilhelm’s life are focused on. Wilhelm and Dr. Tamkin, the fake psychologist, who also lived in the hotel and attended the card game, did business together.
Wilhelm held three orders of lard in the commodities market. He and Dr. Tamkin had bought this lard together four days ago at 12.96 and the price at one began to fall and was still falling. In the mail this morning there was sure to be a call for additional margin payment. One came every day. Dr. Tamkin, a so-called psychologist, had got him into this. The business involved loss for him.
He had explained to Wilhelm that he could speculate in commodities at one of the uptown branches of a good Wall Street house without making the full deposit of margin legally required. It was up to the branch manager. If he knew Wilhelm and all the branch managers knew Tamkin, he would allow him, to make short-term purchases. He needed only to open a small account. The whole secret of this type of speculation, Tamkin had told him, was in the alertness. He has to act fast-buy it and sell it, sell it and buy it again. Tamkin’s words had a great influence on Wilhelm. He thought that Tamkini obviously understood the market well. Otherwise, he could not make it sound so simple. Tamkin also said that people lost because they were greedy and couldn’t get out when it started to go up. They gambled but he did it scientifically. With many experiences and discussions, Tamkin persuaded and hypnotized Wilhelm. He said to him that he thought about people, just because they had a few Cinvest, making fortunes. They had no sense, they had no They just had the extra dough and it made them more dough. à that he knew guys who made five, ten thousand a week just by fooling around. He knew thousands of such kinds of guys who millions. They had smart lawyers who got them out of taxes by cand schemes. Wilhelm said that his wife refused him to sign to join return. He expressed that he was badly in need of money. He sought help from Tamkin.
Wilhelm’s father, Dr. Adler, lived in an entirely different world cm his son’s, but he had warned him once against Dr. Tamkin who, To thought was a persuasive man. It made Wilhelm profoundly embittered that his father should speak to him with such detachment about his welfare. Dr. Adler liked to appear affable. So, Wilhelm could not speak his mind or ease his heart to him. Wilhelm thought that Tamkin sympathized with him and tried to give him a hand, whereas his father didn’t want to be disturbed. Dr. Adler had retired from practice; he had a considerable fortune and could easily have helped his son. Recently, Wilhelm had told him about his critical financial problem. He made himself sound, gentlemanly, low-voiced, and tasteful. He didn’t allow his voice to tremble; he made no stupid gesture. But the doctor had no answer. He only nodded. He behaved towards his son as he had formerly done towards his patients and it was a great grief to Wilhelm; it was almost too much to bear. Greatly hurt Wilhelm struggled however to be fair. He said that old people were bound to change. They had hard things to think about. His father was no longer the same person, he reflected. Furthermore, it was time he stopped feeling like a kid toward him.
Dr. Adler was idolized by everyone in the hotel. He was a popular Magnostician who had tremendous practice. He was very efficient. e stood straight and understood every single thing one said to him. The clerks, the elevator operators, and the telephone girls flattered and pampered him. That was what he wanted. He had always been a vain wall. To see how his father loved himself sometimes made Wilhelm madly indignant. He folded over the Tribune with its heavy, black, crashing sensational print and read without recognizing any of the words, for his mind was still on his father’s vanity.
Wilhelm was the only person in the family who had no one. His sister Catherine had a.B.S degree, his late mother was a graduate of Bryn Mawr. His father was ashamed of him. Wilhelm’s father says his son was a sales executive. His income was up in the five figures somewhere and he needed at least that much for him. Despite his troubles, Wilhelm almost laughed. He regarded his father as a boasting old hypocrite. How do people love looking fine in the eyes of the world-how beautiful were the old when they were doing a snow job. It was dad, Wilhelm thought, who was the salesman. He was selling him (Wilhelm). He should have gone on the road. The truth was that he had problems in which his father wanted no part.
The truth, Wilhelm thought, was very awkward. He pressed his lips together and his tongue went soft; it pained him far at the back, in the cords and throat, and a knot of ill-formed in his chest. Dad never was a pal to him when he was young, he reflected. He was at the office or the hospital or lecturing.
Wilhelm moved to the end of Rubin’s counter. He opened the Tribune; the fresh pages dropped from his hand.
Wilhelm changed his name. He called him Tommy Wilhelm. He adopted it when he went of Hollywood and dropped the “Adler”. Hollywood was his own idea. But the results of the screen test were negative which was very painful and humiliating for him. He recalled his mother’s advice that he should have taken up the medical profession. He contemplated the incidents in detail with Maurice Venice and became very sad. He then brooded over his new name. His father did not accept his new name. Wilhelm thought there was very little that man could change at will. He could not change his lungs, nerves, or temperament. They were not under his control. He had always had a great longing to be Tommy. He had never, however, succeeded in feeling like Tommy, and in his soul, he had always remained Wilky. He thought that it was a good thing perhaps that he had not become a success like Tommy since that would not have been a genuine success. Wilhelm would have feared that not he but Tommy had brought it off, cheating Wilky off his birthright. It had been a stupid thing to do, but it was his imperfect judgment at the age of twenty which should be blamed. He had cast off his father’s name and with it his father’s opinion of him. From his mother, Wilhelm had got sensitive feelings, a soft heart, a brooding nature, and a tendency to be confused under pressure. Wilhelm prayed to God to have mercy upon him so he could get out from his troubles, and his thoughts and do something better and lead a happy life.
Section II
Wilhelm reviewed a mail as well as a bill from the clerk for his rent. To pay the bill he would have to withdraw money from his brokerage account, and the account was being watched because of the drop in lard. He thought that his father might have helped him but he did not. He could easily remove his hardships.
Wilhelm conversed with his father but all was fruitless. His father would not give him an opening to introduce his complaints. He had learned that it was better not to take up Wilhelm’s strange challenges. In conversation with his father he only talked about their past family life. After any talk with Dr. Adler, Wilhelm generally felt dissatisfied, and his dissatisfaction reached its greatest intensity when they discussed family matters. His father was unmoved by any conversation.
Wilhelm was still paying heavily for his mistakes. His wife Margaret would not give him a divorce and he had to support her and the two children. She would regularly agree to divorce him and then thought things over again and set new and more difficult conditions. No court would have awarded her the amounts he paid. One of today’s letters, as he had expected, was from his wife. For the first time, he had sent her a postdated cheque, and she protested, she also enclosed bills for the boys’ educational insurance policies, due next week. Wilhelm’s mother-in-law had taken out these policies in Beverly Hills; since her death two years ago, he had to pay the premiums.
They were his kids and he took care of them and always would. He had planned to set up a trust fund. But that was on his future expectations. Now he had to rethink the future, because of the money problem. Meanwhile, he had the bills to be paid. When he saw the two sums punched out so neatly on the cards he cursed the company and its IBM equipment. His heart and his head were congested with anger. He went into the dining room, which was Austro-Hungarian management at the Hotel Gloriana. It was run like a European establishment. As soon as he entered he saw his father’s small head in the sunny bay at the farther end and heard his precise voice. It was with an odd sort of perilous expression that Wilhelm crossed the dining room.
Dr. Adler liked to sit in a corner that looked across Broadway n to the Hudson and New Jersey. On the other side of the street was a super-modern cafeteria with gold and purple mosaic columns. On the second floor a private eye school, a dental laboratory, his club, and a Hebrew school shared the space. The old man was sprinkling sugar on his strawberries. Wilhelm met his father. Dr. Adler introduced him to one of his German friends, Mr. Perls, the wholesaler whom Wilhelm could not accept cordially from the beginning. Dr. Adler observed that Wilhelm looked particularly at morning-unrested, too, his eyes red-dimmed from smoking. He was breathing through his mouth and he was much distracted and rolled his bloodshot eyes barbarously. As usual, his coat collar was turned up as if he had to go out in the rain. When he went to business he pulled himself together with a little; otherwise, he let himself go and looked like hell. His father warned him against taking too, many pills. But having denied that he complained that he was not used to New York anymore. Here, things were too disordered and that was unbearable to him.
Last Sunday, Wilhelm went to visit his mother’s grave. Dr. Adler had refused to go along. He couldn’t bear his son’s driving. Forgetfully, Wilhelm traveled for miles in second gear; he was seldom in the right lane and he neither gave signals nor watched for lights.
Dr. Adler gave an account of Wilhelm to Mr. Perls, telling lies, in order to keep up his prestige. He told Mr. Perls that Wilhelm’s income was up in the five figures. As soon as money was mentioned, Mr. Perls’ voice grew sharper. How they love money, Wilhelm thought. They adore money. It was getting so that people were feeble-minded about everything except money.
Such thinking brought on the usual congestion. It would grow into a fit of passion if he allowed it to continue. Therefore, he stopped talking and began to eat. Before he struck the egg with his spoon, he dried the moisture with his napkin. Faint grime was left by his fingers on the white of the egg after he had picked away the shell. Dr. Adler saw it with silent repugnance. The doctor couldn’t bear his dirty habits.
Wilhelm drank his coffee with a trembling hand. In full face, his abused bloodshot gray eyes moved back and forth. He and his father talked about Wilhelm’s life and works. Then they talked about Dr. Tamkin. Dr, Adler nurtures that Tamkin is a so-called psychiatrist. He is a little vague. But he is very clever. He gives the impression of knowing something about chemistry and things like hypnotism. But Adler does not believe it. He thinks Tamkin is a liar. Wilhelm tried to refute his father because he had a firm belief in Dr. Tamkin. Then they talked about the inventions of Dr. Tamkin. Adler stated that Tamkin invented an electrical device for truck drivers to wear in their caps to wake them with a shock when they begin to be drowsy at the wheel. Wilhelm commented that it does not seem to him impossible. Then Mr. Perls included another invention of Tamkin which involved an underwater suit so a man could walk on the bed of the Hudson in case of an atomic attack. He said he could walk to Albany in it. Dr. Adler burst out into laughter at hearing this. He satirized the invention. Wilhelm could not stand this. He said that it was just his kind of fantasy. Inventions are supposed to be like that. Everybody wants to make something. Any American does. But his father ignored this. Then his father and Mr. Perl were laughing; Wilhelm could not strain himself and joined in with his own panting laugh. But he was in despair. They were laughing at the man to whom he had given a Mower of attorney over his last seven hundred dollars to speculate for him in the commodities market. They had brought all that lard. It had to rise today. By ten o’clock or half-past ten tradings would be active and he would see.
Section III
Mr. Perls departed. Wilhelm and his father kept thinking. His father thought about his son’s ugly look. He was disturbed that his son was so dirty and untidy. Wilhelm thought he was not so slovenly as his father found him to be. In some aspects, he even had a certain delicacy. His mouth had a fine outline and in his blond hair there was white but there were also shades of gold and chestnut. When he was with the Rojax Corporation he had kept a small apartment in Roxbury, two rooms in a large house with a porch and garden, and on mornings of leisure, in late spring weather like this, he used to sit expanded in a wicker chair with the sunlight pouring through the weave; This peace was gone. It must not have belonged to him, really for to be here in New York with his old father was more genuinely like his life. He was well aware that he didn’t stand a chance of getting sympathy from his father, who said he kept his for real ailments. Moreover, he advised himself repeatedly not to discuss his vexatious problems with him, for this father wanted to be left in peace. Wilhelm also knew when he began to talk about these he made him feel worse, he became congested with them and worked himself into a clutch. Then his father told him to take a bath in the hotel’s swimming pool which is one of the finest pools in New York. Eighty Teet, blue tiles. It’s a beauty. He informed and advised Wilhelm to Investigate the Russian and Turkish baths, and the sunlamps and massage. Massage does a world of good, and there’s nothing better man hydrotherapy. Simple water has a calming effect. Wilhelm reflected that this advice was as far as his father’s help and sympathy Puld extend. He said that he thought that the water cure was for lunatics. Dr. Adler received it as a joke and smilingly said that that to make a sane man a lunatic. He expressed that he could not live without massages and steams. He then suggested that Wilhelm q not take drugs, rather he should take bath and exercise. Wilhelm revealed that a bath was not going to cure what ailed him. Wilhelm expressed his real problems regarding the payment of premiums on two policies for the boys. His father told him not to give so much money to her. Wilhelm said that it was for his kids whom he loved very much. He did not want to deprive them.
His father informed him that his sister Catherine had asked for money from him to rent a gallery for exhibition. But he did not support it, because he thought it was not worth doing and she was not a born artist. Wilhelm disagreed with him because he thought that she should be supported to try something worthwhile. Dr. Adler expressed that he was completely in the dark when it came to women and money. He added that Wilhelm’s wife Margaret wanted to bring him back by financial force. Wilhelm could not accept his father’s view.
His father asked Wilhelm to settle with his wife. Wilhelm told him that he always wanted to settle with her. Four years ago, when they broke up, he gave her everything-goods, furniture, savings. He tried to show goodwill, but he did not get anywhere. It was bad enough to leave the kids. She absolutely refused him. She always demanded more and more. Two years ago she wanted to go back to college and get another degree. It increased his burden but thought it would be wiser in the end if she got a better job through it. But still, she took as much from him as before. Next, she wanted to be a doctor of philosophy. After hearing these his father advised him to go to a good lawyer. Wilhelm replied that he had already gone to a good lawyer. His wife also had a lawyer. But they only sent him bills and he was hard-hit to pay them. He once again expressed his utter misery to his father. His father commented that he always thought that she was a strange kind of woman. Wilhelm expressed that she hated him. He felt that she was strangling him. He could not catch his breath. She had just fixed herself on him to kill him. One day he would be struck down by suffocation or apoplexy because of her. From the time he met her he had been a slave. A husband like him was a slave, with an iron collar. Wilhelm added that a rich man might be free on an income of a million net. A poor man might be free because nobody cares what he did. But a fellow in his position had to sweat it out until he dropped dead. His father said to him that it was entirely his fault. Stopped in his eloquence, Wilhelm could not speak for a while. Dumb and incompetent, he struggled for breath and frowned with effort into his father’s face.
His father could not be persuaded; he shook his round head and drew his vest down over the gilded shirt, and leaned back with the completeness of style that made this look, to anyone out of the bearing, like an ordinary conversation between a middle-aged man and his respected father. Wilhelm towered and swayed with his gray eyes bloodshot and his honey-colored hair twisted in flaming shapes upwards. Injustice made him angry. But he wanted an understanding with his father and he tried to capitulate to him.
Wilhelm’s father said that he and his mother led a different life. Wilhelm’s got angry and said that he should not compare his mother with his wife because his mother was a help to his father. She never med him. He added that he could not compare himself and Wilhelm. His father was a success but he was not. After hearing this his father lost all his composure and became hard and angry. He replied that because of hard work he made his success. He was not self-indulgent, not lazy. Wilhelm told him that he would not admit that he was lazy. He tried too hard. He admitted that he made mistakes. His father continued that he did not run around with fifty women, either. He was not a Hollywood star. He did not have time to go to Cuba for a vacation. He stayed at home and took care of his children. Wilhelm got upset. He thought that his father did not see what he wanted. He told his father that he was very unfair to him. He admitted that the movie was a false step. But he loved his boys. He did not abandon them. He left Margaret because he had to. He just could not live with Margaret. She was one way and he was another. She would not be like him, so he tried to be like her, and he could not do it. He did not want to leave but he could not stay. Somebody had to take the initiative and he did. Now he was the fall guy too.
Dr. Adler asked him further about why he lost his job at Rojax. Was it because of a woman or man? Wilhelm replied that it was due to nepotism. Then pressed hard, he admitted that he developed a relationship with a catholic lady. Both of them fell in love and wanted to marry, but she got tired of waiting for his divorce. Margaret figured that. Because the girl was a Catholic, he had to go with her to e priest and make an explanation. Neither did this last confession en Dr. Adler’s sympathies, sway his calm old head, or affect the ur of his complexion. He told him that all he said was wrong. Wilhelm’s got very upset. He said that his father had no sympathy for His father always wanted to blame him for his failure instead of helping him.
Tears approached his eyes but he did not let them out. He looked y enough as it was. His voice was thick and hazy. He was stammering and could not bring his awful feelings forth. Dr. Adler n about what he expected from him. Wilhelm felt as though he were unable to recover something. His self-control was going out. like a ball in the surf. Wilhelm said, “I expect help!” The words escaped him in a loud, wild, frantic cry and startled his father. He added that his father was not sorry when he suffered because he had no affection for him.
Wilhelm told his father openly that he had pity for his father. He wanted his father to live on and on. If his father outlived him, that was perfectly okay, he said. His father did not answer this avowal and turned away his glance, Wilhelm suddenly burst out and said “No, but you hate me. And if I had money you wouldn’t. By God, you have to admit it.” His father told him that he could not give him money. There would be no end to it if he started it. He was still alive. His life was not over. He wanted nobody on his back. He once again advised Wilhelm not to carry anybody on his back. Wilhelm said miserably, “Just keep your money. Keep it and enjoy it yourself.”
Section IV
When Wilhelm got out of the dining room, horribly worked up, he felt extremely foolish, contemptible, and ridiculous. When he remembered how he had said, with great reproof, “You ought to know your own son”– he thought that it was very corny and abominable. He could not get out of the sharply brilliant dining room fast enough. He was horribly worked up; his neck and shoulders, his entire chest ached as though they had been tightly tied with ropes. He smelled the salt color of tears in his nose. But at the same time, he received a suggestion from some remote element in his thought that the business of life, the real business was to carry his peculiar burden, to feel shame and impotence, to taste these quelled tears. The making of mistakes expressed the very purpose of his life and the essence of his being there. Maybe he was supposed to make them and suffer from them on this earth. And though he had raised himself above Mr. Perls and his father because they adored money, still they were called to act energetically and this was better than to yell and cry, pray and beg, poke and blunder and go by fits and starts and fall upon the thorns of life.
But he raged once more against his father. He thought that he wanted not the money from his father, but only assistance; not even assistance but just the feeling of sympathy. Feeling he recalled, got him in dutch at Rojas. He had the feeling that he belonged to the firm and his feelings were hurt when they put Gerber in over him. His father thought that Wilhelm was too simple but he was not so simple as his father thought. He was musing over this sort of thing when he was greeted by Dr. Tamkin in the lobby. His sudden appearance set Wilhelm thinking about him-is he a liar? Is he a Pontific man? But the time for these questions was over and he had trusted him then. After a long struggle to come to a decision, he had given him the money. Practical judgment was in abeyance. He had worn himself out, and the decision was no decision.
Dr. Tamkin had given him his cheque for three hundred dollars. Wilhelm, in a blinded and convulsed aberration, pressed and pressed to try to kill the trembling of his hand as he wrote out his cheque for a thousand. He set his lips tight, crouched with his huge back over the table, and wrote with crumbling, terrified fingers, knowing that if Tamkin’s cheque bounced, his own would not be honored either. His sole cleverness was to set the date ahead by one day to give the green cheque time to clear.
Next, he had signed a power of attorney, allowing Tamkin to speculate with his money, and this was even a more frightening document. After delivering his signatures, the only precaution Wilhelm took was to come back to the manager of the brokerage office and ask him privately, “Oh, about Dr. Tamkin. We were in here a few minutes ago, remember?” The manager replied that he remembered, Wilhelm reminded’ him that a few minutes ago he signed a power of attorney so Dr. Tamkin could invest for him. Then he asked, “Does this give Dr. Tamkin power of attorney over any other assets of mine money or property?” The manager replied, “No, Sir, it does not give him.” The answer comforted him. However, the question had no value. None at all because Wilhelm had other assets. He had given Tamkin his last money. There wasn’t enough of it to cover his obligation anyway, and Wilhelm had reckoned that he might as well go bankrupt then as in the next month. “Either broke or rich,” was how he had figured and that formula had encouraged him to take the gamble. Well, not rich; he did not expect that, but perhaps Tamkin might show him how to earn what he needed in the market. By now, however, he had forgotten his own reckoning and was aware only that he stood to lose his seven hundred dollars to the last cent.
Dr. Tamkin took the attitude that they were a pair of gentlemen experimenting with lard and grain futures. The money, a few hundred dollars, meant nothing much to either of them. Tamkin told Wilhelm, “You have to take specimen risks so that you feel the process, the money flow, the whole complex. To know how it feels to be a seaweed you have to get in the water. In a very short time, we’ll take out a hundred percent profit.” Thus Wilhelm had to pretend at the outset that his interest in the market was theoretical.
Next Tamkin asked about Wilhelm’s family situation. He put himself forward as a keen mental scientist. Whenever this happened, Wilhelm did not know what to reply. No matter what he said or did, it seemed that Dr. Tamkin saw through him. Wilhelm told him about his recent meeting with his father and their strained relationship.
Dr. Tamkin possessed strange physical features. His bald skull, his gull’s nose, his rather handsome eyebrows, his vain mustache, and his deceiver’s brown eyes were full of complexities. His figure was stocky, rigid, short in the neck so that the large ball of the occiput| touched his collar. His bones were peculiarly formed, as though twisted twice where the ordinary human bone was turned only once. He stood pigeon-toed, a sign perhaps that he was devious or had much to hide. His eyes were as brown as beaver fur and full of strange lines. There was a hypnotic power in his eyes, but this was not always of the same strength, nor was Wilhelm convinced that it was completely natural. He felt that Tamkin tried to make his eyes deliberately conspicuous, with studied art and that he brought forth his hypnotic effect by an excretion. Occasionally, it failed or drooped.
Wilhelm wanted to talk about the lard holdings, but Dr. Tamkin diverted his attention and launched a philosophical discussion. He told Wilhelm an interesting story about a woman who had two husbands. Wilhelm was amazed after hearing the story. He was always hearing such stories from Dr. Tamkin. He mused for some time. Everybody in the hotel had a mental disorder, a secret history, and a concealed disease. The wife of Rubin at the newsstand was supposed to be kept by Carl, a yelling, loud-mouthed gin-rummy player. The wife of Frank in the barbershop had disappeared with a GI while he was waiting for her to disembark at the French Lines pier. Everyone was like the face on a playing card, upside down either way. Every public figure had a character neurosis. Maddest of all were the businessmen, the beardless, flaunting, boisterous business class who ruled this country with their hard manners and their bold lies, and their absurd words that nobody could believe. They were crazier than anyone. Wilhelm thinking of Rojax corporation was inclined to agree that many businessmen were insane. And he supposed that Tamkin spoke a kind of truth and did some people a sort of good.
Next, Wilhelm recalled that they ought to go to the market. Dr. kin replied that it was not even nine o’clock and there wasn’t ī trading the first hour anyway. Things did not get hot
until half-past ten. Tamkin again diverted Wilhelm’s attention to the anecdotes concerning his patients. The story involved a boy and his dad. The father was a nudist. Wilhelm began to laugh after hearing the anecdote.
Tamkin gave Wilhelm many pieces of advice. He said with the past is not good for us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real-the here-and-now. Seize the Day.”
Tamkin related to Wilhelm’s many other experiences. A few days 200 Tamkin had hinted that he had once been in the underworlds, one of the Detroit Purple Gang. He was one head of a mental clinic in Toledo. He had worked with a Polish inventor on an unsinkable ship. He was a technical consultant in the field of television. In the life of a man of genius, all of these things might happen. Wilhelm thought had they happened to Tamkin? Was he a genius? He often said that he had attended some of the Egyptian royal families as a psychiatrist. An Egyptian princess whom he had treated in California for horrible disorders he had described to Wilhelm, retained him to come back to the old country with her, and there he had many of her friends and relatives under his care. They turned over a villa on the Nile to him. Listening to the doctor when he was so strangely factual, Wilhelm had to translate his words into his own language, and he could not translate fast enough or find terms to fit what he heard. Those Egyptian big shots, Tamkin said, invested in the market, too, for the heck of it. By association, he almost became a millionaire himself and If he had played it smart there was no telling what might have happened. He could have been an ambassador.
One of his friends tipped him off on the cotton. He made a heavy purchase of it. He didn’t have that kind of money but everybody there knew him. The sale was made on the phone. Then while the cotton shipment was at sea, the price tripled. When the stuff suddenly came so valuable all hell broke loose in the world of the cotton market, they looked to see who was the owner of this big shipment. ay investigated his credit and found out that he was a mere doctor, and they canceled. This was illegal. He sued them. But as he didn’t have the money to fight them he sold the suit to a Wall Street lawyer for twenty thousand dollars. He fought it and was winning. They with him out of court for more than a million. But on the way back from Cairo flying, there was a crash, of the murderer of the lawyer. Wilhelm thought he must be a real jerk to sit and listen to such impossible stories. He guessed he was a sucker for people who talked about the deeper things of life.
Wilhelm was aware that he hadn’t applied his mind strictly to anything. A glance at the clock told him that the market would soon open. They could spare a few minutes yet. There were still more things he wanted to hear from Tamkin. He realized that Tamkin spoke faultily. But Tamkin’s description impressed him. Secretly, he prayed the doctor would give him some useful advice and transform his life. Tamkin said that he thought that Wilhelm was intelligent but he hadn’t made a study of it all. As a matter of fact, he was a profound personality with very profound creative capacities but also disturbances. Tamkin added that he had been concerned with Wilhelm.
That the doctor cared about him pleased him. This was what he craved, that someone should care about him, wish him well. He wanted kindness and mercy.
Wilhelm retracted his heavy shoulders in his peculiar way, drawing his hands up into his sleeves; his feet moved easily under the table-but he was worried, too, and even somewhat indignant. For what right had Tamkin to meddle without being asked? What kind of privileged life did this man lead? He took other people’s money and speculated with it. Everybody came under his care. No one could have secrets from him.
The doctor looked at him with his deadly, brown, heavy, impenetrable eyes and said, “You have lots of guilt in you”. Wilhelm helplessly admitted, “Yes, I think so too.” He added that he always tried to lay off. Then he said, “And now, Tamkin for Christ’s sake, they are putting out the lunch menus already. Will you sign the cheque, and let’s go!” Tamkin did as he asked, and they rose. They were passing the bookkeeper’s desk when he took out a substantial bundle of onionskin papers. Tamkin gave Wilhelm the receipts of the transactions and a copy of a poem which, he said, was written by him.
Wilhelm got utterly confused after reading the poem. He said to himself explosively, what kind of mishmash, claptrap is this! What does he want from me! What does he give me this for? What’s the purpose? Is it a deliberate test? Does he want to mix me up? He’s stood near the shining window of a fancy fruit store, holding Tamkin’s paper, rather dazed, as though a character of photograph’s flash powder had gone up in his eyes. Tamkin was waiting for Wilhelm’s reaction. But Wilhelm could not understand anything. He did not know what to say. He felt too choked and strangled. Temkin asked about his reaction. Wilhelm said that he felt very nice, Wilhelm asked about the person about whom the poem was written. Tamkin replied that he wrote the poem on Wilhelm.
Section V
Crossing the tide of Broadway traffic, Wilhelm was saying to himself, that the reason Tamkin lectured him was that somebody had Tortured him, and the reason for the poem was that he wanted to give him good advice.
Wilhelm believed that he must, that he could and would recover the good things, the happy things, the easy, tranquil things of life. He had made mistakes, but he could overlook these. He had been a fool but that could be forgiven. The time wasted must be relinquished. What else could one do about it? Things were too complex, but that might be reduced to simplicity again. Recovery was possible.
From the carnival of the street, they entered the narrow crowded theatre of the brokerage office. From front to back it was filled with the Broadway crowd. But how was lard doing this morning? Wilhelm thought. From the rear of the hall, Wilhelm tried to read the tiny figures. The German manager was looking through his binoculars. Tamkin: placed himself on Wilhelm’s left and covered his conspicuous bald head. They passed, however, unobserved. “Look, the lard has held its place,” Wilhelm said.
Tamkin’s eyes must be very sharp to read the figures over so many heads.
The room was crowded, everyone talked. Only at the front could one hear the flutter of the wheels within the board. Teletyped news items crossed the illuminated screen above.
“Lard. Now what about rye?” said Tamkin, rising on his toes. Here he was a different man, active and impatient. He parted people who stood in his way. His face turned resolute, and on either side of his mouth, odd bulges formed under his mustache. Already he was pointing out to Wilhelm the appearance of a new pattern on the Board. “There is something up today”, he said.
There were no reserved seats in the room, only customary ones. Tamkin always sat in the second row, on the commodities side of the Some of his acquaintances kept their hats on the chairs for him.
Vilhelm had examined the receipts, but until this moment it had never occurred to him that there must be debit slips too; he had been shown only the credits. Wilhelm could not allow his hopes to grow too strong. However, for a little while, he could breathe more easily. Late. morning trading was getting active. The shining numbers whirred on the board. Lard fluctuated between two points, but rye slowly climbed.
Wilhelm closed his strained, greatly earnest eyes briefly and nodded his Buddha’s head, too large to suffer such uncertainties. He thought that he would get out of there. He did not belong in New York anymore. He sighed like a sleeper.
Tamkin could not sit still in the room but passed back and forth between the stocks and commodities sections. He knew dozens of people and was continually engaging in discussions. Perhaps he could put people in a trance while he talked to them. What a rare, peculiar bird he was. He spoke of things that mattered, and as very few people did this he could take anyone by surprise.
Tamkin and Wilhelm, he thought, were equal partners, but Tamkin had put up only three hundred dollars. He did this not only once but five times; then an investment of fifteen hundred dollars gave him five thousand to speculate with. If he had power of attorney in every case, he could shift the money from one account to another. Calculations like this made Wilhelm feel ill. Obviously, Tamkin was a plunger, he thought. Wilhelm involved himself in a deep examination of Tamkin’s personality. Tamkin must be in his fifties. How did he support himself? Five years in Egypt; Hollywood before that; Michigan; Ohio; Chicago. A man of fifty has supported himself for at least thirty years. Tamkin had never worked in a factory or in an office. How did he make it? His taste in clothes was horrible, but he did not buy cheap things. He had a good room at the Gloriana and had it for about a year. But so was Wilhelm himself a guest, with an unpaid bill at present in his father’s box. Did the beautiful girl with the skirts and belts pay him? Was he defrauding his so-called patients? So many questions impossible to answer could not be asked about an honest man. Nor perhaps about a sane man. Was Tamkin a lunatic, then? That sick Mr. Perls at breakfast had said that there was no easy way to tell the sane from the mad, and he was right about that in any big city and especially in New York-the end of the world, with its complexity and machinery, bricks and tubes. Here, everyone had to explain and explain, back and forth; and it was the punishment of hell itself not to understand or be understood, not to know the crazy from the sane, the wise from the fools, the young from the old or the sick from the well. The fathers were no fathers and the sons no sons. One had to talk with himself in the daytime and reason with oneself at night. There was nobody to talk to in a city like New York.
The old fellow Mr. Rappaport, who was nearly blind, asked Wilhelm about the new figure on November wheat and soybeans. Wilhelm told him about the figures. Wilhelm thought that the old might give him a tip or some useful advice or information about Tamkin. But he did not. He only wrote memoranda on a pad and put the pad in his pocket. He let no one see what he had written.
Tamkin began his philosophical lecture, telling him to be patient about the lard market and rye market, to think only of the present, forgetting the past and the future. He indulged in all this Chilosophising in order to divert Wilhelm’s mind from the thought of selling rye immediately.
Section VI
Wilhelm and Tamkin went out to have their lunch. The price of rye was still high and that of lard was constant. In the crowded cafeteria, they managed to find a seat and 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? Tamkin asked Wilhelm about his family. Wilhelm replied that he loved all but was loved by none.
Then Wilhelm began to think about his own two sons and to wonder how he appeared to them, and what they would think of him. They did not know how much he cared for them. It hurt him greatly and he blamed Margaret for turning them against him. She wanted to ruin him, while she wore the mask of kindness. Up in Roxbury, he had to go and explain to the priest who was not sympathetic. They did not care about individuals, their rules came first.
Tamkin told Wilhelm about his wife. Tamkin was married to a lush, painful alcoholic. He could not take her out to dinner because she would say she was going to the ladies’ toilet and would disappear into the bar. He would ask the bartenders if they should not serve her. But he loved her. Tamkin said, deeply. She was the most spiritual woman in his entire experience. She drowned at Provincetown, Cape Cod. It must have been a suicide. She was that y suicidal. He tried everything in his power to cure her. He would like to escape from the sicknesses of others, but he could not. He belonged to humanity. “Liar!” Wilhelm called him inwardly. Nasty lies, Wilhelm thought. He invented a woman and killed her off and then called himself a healer, and made himself so earnest he looked like a bad-natured sheep. He is a puffed-up little bogus humbug with feet. Wilhelm thought that Tamkin thought he had imagination but he had not, and neither was he smart. “Then what am I doing with him here, and why did I give him the seven hundred dollars?” thought Wilhelm.
This was a day of reckoning, Wilhelm thought. It was a day, on which, willing or not, he would take a good close look at the truth. He breathed hard and his misshapen hat came low upon his congested dark-blond face. Tamkin was a charlatan and, furthermore, Wilhelm had always known this about him. Wilhelm realized that he was on Tamkin’s back. It made him feel that he had virtually left the ground and was riding upon the other man. He was in the air. It was for Tamkin to take the steps.
Tamkin was as expressive as a pincushion while talking about spontaneous emotion and open receptors and free impulses. When his hypnotic spell failed, his big underlip made him look weak-minded. Once or twice Wilhelm had seen that look. The doctor needed a little time; he should not be pressed, Wilhelm thought.
Wilhelm thought that he was on Tamkin’s back. He gambled seven hundred dollars, so he must take that ride. He had to go along with Tamkin. He could not get off because it was too late.
Tamkin told Wilhelm about the chicken-dealer, Mr. Rappaport. Tamkin again began his philosophical discussions. He said that he observed that Wilhelm had hoped to live. He was trying hard to keep his feelings open; he did not want to destroy himself. Wilhelm was profoundly moved by these revelations. How does he know these things? How can he be such a jerk, and understand so well? What gives? Wilhelm thought. What Tamkin said was true. He thought that he was trying hard but this working hard defeated its own end. That was what was turning his head. Wilhelm turned again, in measurable degrees, from these wide considerations to the problems of the moment. The closer he approached the market, the more Wilhelm had to think about money.
The price of rye and lard fell considerably, so Wilhelm had so chance to sell them. Wilhelm got very anxious and disconsolate and began to search for Tamkin. But he could not find him anywhere.
Section VII
Wilhelm realized that he was the man beneath. Tamkin was on his back, instead of he on his. He hurried to the lobby of the Hotel Gloriana to phone the operator in the lobby to give the whereabouts of Tamkin, but to no effect. Wilhelm then went to the men’s health club. He went through the locker-room curtains. Two men were playing ping-pong. The negro in the toilet was shining shoes.
On the fourth table of the health club, Wilhelm saw his father, having a massage by a masseur. He told his father about his problem but his father rudely rejected him. Wilhelm told his father That it was not all a question of money; there were other things a Father could give to a son. He lifted up his eyes and his nostrils grew wide with a look of suffering appeal that stirred his father even more deeply against him. Wilhelm expressed that only a word from his father would go a long way. He never asked for very much. He did not give the little bit his son begged him for.
Wilhelm recognized that his father was furiously angry. Adler raised himself and said to Wilhelm that he wanted to see Wilhelm dead. Wilhelm’s blood rose up madly, in anger equal to his father’s, but then it sank down and left him helplessly captive to misery. He said stiffly and with a strange sort of formality; “Okay, Dad. That’ll be enough. That’s about all we should say.” He then stalked out heavily by the door adjacent to the swimming pool.
Wilhelm inquired at the desk for Dr. Tamkin. The clerk replied that he had not seen the latter. Wilhelm got a telephone message from his wife Margaret. Whenever he received an urgent message from his wife, he was always thrown into a great fear for the children. He ran to the telephone booth and called his wife. She complained that he had sent her a post-dated check. She blamed him for everything.
Wilhelm got very upset. He decided to divorce his wife. She had ruined him. She hit him and battered him. He also decided to sell his car to pay off the hotel. In the street, he thought he saw Dr. Tamkin but he understood that he was at a funeral procession. He shouted or Tamkin. But he was pushed to the side by a policeman clutching his nightstick at both ends. Wilhelm was moved forward by the pressure of the crowd. He cried, “Tamkin”, But Tamkin was gone. It was himself who was carried from the street into the chapel. The pressure ended inside, where it was dark and cool. He gave a sigh when he heard the organ notes that stirred and breathed from the pes. Men in formal clothes and black homburgs strode softly back forth on the cork floor, up and down the center aisle.
Within a few minutes, Wilhelm had forgotten Tamkin. He stood along the wall with others and looked toward the coffin, gazing at the face of the dead. Presently he too was in that line foot by foot; he neared the coffin and paused for his turn and gazed down. He got emotion-choked when he looked at the corpse. His eyes shone hugely with instant tears.
The dead man was gray-haired. He had two large waves of gray hair at the front. But he was not old. His face was long, and he had a bony nose, delicately twisted. By his meditative look, Wilhelm was so struck that he could not go away. In spite of the tinge of horror and the splash of heart-sickness that he felt, he could not go. He remained beside the coffin. With great stifling sorrow, almost admiration, Wilhelm nodded and nodded. He felt afflicted for the dead person.
Standing a little apart, Wilhelm began to cry. He cried at first softly and from sentiment but soon from deeper feeling. He sobbed loudly and his face grew distorted and hot. His efforts to compose himself were useless. He cried with all his heart. He alone of all the people in the chapel was sobbing. They regarded Wilhelm to be a relative of the dead person. The flowers and lights fused ecstatically in Wilhelm’s wet eyes, he heard the heavy sea-like music and sank deeper than sorrow toward the condemnation of his heart’s ultimate need.
Synopsis of the Story
Tommy Wilhelm is temporarily living in Hotel Gloriana in New York. He is in his mid-forties, large and blonde, with a heavy and strong back and big shoulders. His father has been living in the hotel for several years. Rubin, an agent at the newsstand, praises his strong and large features, but Wilhelm expresses self-pity by calling himself “a fair-haired hippopotamus” because he thinks that his good appearance has been the cause of his failure.
In a back-flash, Wilhelm’s past life is narrated. He did business in the commodities market with Dr. Tamkin, a deceitful man, a so-called psychologist. The business involved him in the loss. He also tried his luck as an actor in Hollywood but was a failure there. He is now utterly helpless.
Wilhelm prays to God that He might take him out of his trouble, and let him do something better.
He receives the mail, and bills for his rent. He has no money to pay the bill. His father Dr. Adler, a very rich man, talks about their family members, Wilhelm’s strained relationship with his wife Margaret, and two children, who are living separately from him. Wilhelm has to bear their expenses. His father introduces him to Mr. Perls, a hosiery wholesaler, and tells lies to him about Wilhelm in order to keep up the prestige. Referring to Dr. Tamkin, his father expresses doubt about his being a psychologist. Mr. Perls takes part in the discussion of the depreciation of Dr. Tamkin.
Then Dr. Adler asks him why he has a bad relationship with his wife, why he was dismissed from his job with Rojax, and if he had any relationship with any woman. Ultimately he asks Wilhelm what he casts from him. Wilhelm tells him he expects help from him. His her refuses to help him and advises him to have nobody on his back.
Wilhelm gets out of the dining room of the hotel, extremely tired. He feels angry with his father who did not even seem to have sympathy for him, let alone give him monetary help. He meets Dr. Tamkin in the lobby. He wonders what type of man he is, but he has no way to get rid of him now because he has already signed a power of attorney authorizing him to speculate with his seven hundred dollars – the only money that he had. When he proposes going to market, Dr. Tamkin launches a philosophical disquisition, advising him to “seize the day”, forgetting the past and the future. Dr. Tamkin also offers him a poem he wrote the previous night in which he referred to Wilhelm as “King”.
Tamkin thus infused hope and inspiration into Wilhelm’s mind, but Wilhelm still has doubts about his integrity. In the market, Wilhelm sought help from a Mr. Rappaport, a chicken dealer, regarding the estimate of the lard and rye market, but in vain. Tamkin again began his philosophical lecture in order to divert his mind from the thought of selling rye immediately.
They both go out to lunch. Tamkin has a heavy lunch, whereas Wilhelm cannot even swallow his yogurt; his chest is painful. Tamkin talks about a lot of things again; his purpose is not clear. They start for the market, but Wilhelm has no chance to sell rye and lard because their price has fallen meanwhile. In the market, Tamkin disappears from Wilhelm’s sight. Wilhelm tries to find him. He now Healizes that Tamkin is the man on his back. Wilhelm goes back to e hotel, and tries to phone him, but cannot find his whereabouts. goes to his father with his problem, but he rudely rejects Wilhelm. He receives a telephone message from his wife Margaret complaining that he sent her a post-dated cheque.
Very upset, Wilhelm hurries into the street. He decides to divorce Margaret and sell his car to pay off the hotel bill. But he finds himself in the funeral procession. The dead is an unknown person, but he bursts into tears. People think he must be someone dear to the dead.
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