Read Online In the Absence of Angels by Hortense Calisher - Free Book Online Page B

but the quick eye of the doctor saw that the movement masked a slight contortion within his tweed suit, as if the man writhed away from himself but concealed it quickly, as one masks a hiccup with a cough. “A curious flutter in the cardiograph, a strange variation in the metabolism, an alien shadow under the fluoroscope.” He coughed again and put a genteel hand over his mouth, but this time the doctor saw it clearly — the slight, cringing motion.
    “You see,” added the man, his eyes helpless and apologetic above the polite covering hand. “It’s alive. It travels .”
    “Yes. Yes, of course,” said the doctor, soothingly now. In his mind hung the word, ovoid and perfect as a drop of water about to fall. Obsession. A beautiful case. He thought again of the luncheon table.
    “What did your doctor recommend?” he said.
    “A place with more resources, like the Mayo Clinic. It was then that I told him I knew what it was, as I’ve told you. And how I acquired it.” The visitor paused. “Then, of course, he was forced to pretend he believed me.”
    “Forced?” said the doctor.
    “Well,” said the visitor, “actually, I think he did believe me. People tend to believe anything these days. All this mass media information gives them the habit. It takes a strong individual to disbelieve evidence.”
    The doctor was confused and annoyed. Well, “What then?” he said peremptorily, ready to rise from his desk in dismissal.
    Again came the fleeting bodily grimace and the quick cough. “He — er …he gave me a prescription.”
    The doctor raised his eyebrows, in a gesture he was swift to retract as unprofessional.
    “For heartburn, I think it was,” added his visitor demurely.
    Tipping back in his chair, the doctor tapped a pencil on the edge of the desk. “Did he suggest you seek help — on another level?”
    “Many have suggested it,” said the man.
    “But I’m not a psychiatrist!” said the doctor irritably.
    “Oh, I know that. You see, I came to you because I had the luck to hear one of your lectures at the Academy. The one on ‘Overemphasis on the Non-somatic Causes of Nervous Disorder.’ It takes a strong man to go against the tide like that. A disbeliever. And that’s what I sorely need.” The visitor shuddered, this time letting the frisson pass uncontrolled. “You see,” he added, thrusting his clasped hands forward on the desk, and looking ruefully at the doctor, as if he would cushion him against his next remark, “you see — I am a psychiatrist.”
    The doctor sat still in his chair.
    “Ah, I can’t help knowing what you are thinking,” said the man. “I would think the same. A streamlined version of the Napoleonic delusion.” He reached into his breast pocket, drew out a wallet, and fanned papers from it on the desk.
    “Never mind. I believe you!” said the doctor hastily.
    “Already?” said the man sadly.
    Reddening, the doctor hastily looked over the collection of letters, cards of membership in professional societies, licenses, and so on — very much the same sort of thing he himself would have had to amass, had he been under the same necessity of proving his identity. Sanity, of course, was another matter. The documents were all issued to Dr. Curtis Retz at a Boston address. Stolen, possibly, but something in the man’s manner, in fact everything in it except his unfortunate hallucination, made the doctor think otherwise. Poor guy, he thought. Occupational fatigue, perhaps. But what a form! The Boston variant, possibly. “Suppose you start from the beginning,” he said benevolently.
    “If you can spare the time ...”
    “I have no more appointments until lunch.” And what a lunch that’ll be, the doctor thought, already cherishing the pop-eyed scene — Travis the clinic’s director (that plethoric Nestor), and young Gruenberg (all of whose cases were unique), his hairy nostrils dilated for once in a mise-en-scène which he did not dominate.
    Holding his hands