had known, everyone with whom I had come in contact, student, faculty, and staff, popped up in alphabetical order as if standing before me: to remind me of who I might be to them, how they might have seen me, what I did or did not do; what I said or left unsaid; to him, to her, to him, to him, to him, to her, to her, to her.
Her! Her! Her!
Out flew the crows, as I feared they might. For in those pages was my darker self, laid bare to some, still invisible to others; and did I want to know which I was, and to whom?
I put the whole mass of pages in the dirty, unused oven, and shut the door, thinking that I would wait, wait and see until the patient’s return, when I might be stronger. Yet as the hours advanced, it was as if something were banging against the grime-smeared glass of the oven door, and I knew I could not hide from those hundreds of pages, from those thousands of words.
I read through the night, forcing myself to go on and on, no matter what, not allowing myself to mark any pages or scream back with any defenses; only reading, transcript after transcript, until light glowed at the corners of the window shades and the last page was turned. And yet I still could not decipher who I was, what I was. Some saw me as a decent man; a few as an ogre. Who was right? The committee would have to decide.
116.
The next day, for sustenance, I went to the office. I asked the help of the friends who had taken me thus far: the hardworking gargoyles, the lobby in its purity, the empty reception podium, where my providential protector once had stood guard over me, the cherubs floating above the elevators, the steadfast marble sentries who lined the hall.
I came to our dear eighth floor. I touched the golden letters that spelled out Dr. Schussler’s name on her door. I rubbed my hands over the doorposts of my own. For I felt—as I once had, a long year and three months ago—that it had not been guilt and despair that had sent me here. I had not fled the university pursued by the ever-vengeful Furies. I had been led here by Athena’s Eumenides—the kindly ones, the gracious ones—who had brought me to this building, this office with its lucky number 807; to the thin door that adjoined my room to the one next door, through which I had become adjoined to my dear patient.
Then the days advanced toward the patient’s return.
Yet the weight of the transcripts hung upon me. And I had to ask myself: Was I altogether innocent? Could I say with utter certainty there had been nothing of love in my feelings for the boy? Was it only a metaphysical love; only the charged feelings between mentor and apprentice? Was I not always on the brink of transgression, taunted by my foes, my darker nature, just as I had been with the patient?
If not for the boy’s running off … If not for his disappearance … If I had come to San Francisco earlier … Let us say I had found him that night in the Castro … If it had been his eyes that looked back at me in the bar’s flashing blue light … If we had encountered each other there and then … what?
117.
Such was my unmoored state as the long Thanksgiving hiatus came to an end. Perhaps it was asking too much to hope that the patient’s return, of itself, would restore me to equanimity. Yet in no way could I have anticipated the next turn of events.
For no sooner did the patient take her seat in Dr. Schussler’s office than she said:
I went back to Tel Aviv.
(God, no! I wanted to cry out. We have already dispensed with this mother!)
I’m surprised, said Dr. Schussler (repressing her own shock, as one could tell from the creaks of her leather chair).
I believe, the doctor went on, that you had come to the conclusion that your life and Michal’s did not intersect.
(Exactly! Good work, Dr. Schussler. Remind her of her freedom!)
A silence of several seconds spread itself out between client and doctor into which car horns blared and radiators spat their steam.
Finally Dr. Schussler said:
It is because of what happened in Pebble Beach, yes?