The Session

 

 

At four o’clock in the afternoon, my psychoanalyst called. Having just discovered his wife’s second lover, he was very upset.

‘It’s unbelievable!’ he shouted. I won’t have it.’

‘Calm down,’ I advised him. ‘Bodies don’t exist. People don’t either. In reality, we can only talk about functions. Are you with me? None of us is who we think we are, not in relation to ourselves or in relation to others. So, your wife’s second lover. . .’

‘I don’t want to hear about him!’ he yelled, out of sorts. ‘I haven’t been able to eat since I found out about them. I haven’t had a bite all day.’

‘That means you can’t accept reality. Food has come to represent what you reject. . .’

‘I know,’ he whimpered, almost bursting into tears.

‘No one dies from not eating for a day or two. The diet will do you good, you’ll eliminate toxins.’

‘I don’t understand why she has to see him on Tuesdays,’ he confided more calmly.

I took advantage of the pause to try to put reality into a glass, which is a tricky maneuver. I’d been working at that since dawn, but each time I tried to grasp it, reality slipped away from me. Now, as I spoke over the phone with my psychoanalyst, I tried to hold the glass, reality, and the receiver all at the same time.

‘What happens on Tuesdays?’ I asked as I pushed the glass toward the center of the nightstand.

‘Nothing in particular,’ he said. ‘It’s just that she sees her second lover on that day, and not on any other. I don’t understand, why does it have to be on Tuesdays?’

‘It’s probably the only day they both have free,’ I reasoned plainly.

‘Far from it,’ he corrected me. ‘Tuesdays are very complicated. In the morning he gives his philosophy class, at twelve he has lunch with his children, and at six he has his weekly meeting at the university auditorium. As for her, on Tuesdays we have breakfast together, after which she does some yoga and attends her anthropology course, and at night she sings in the Friends of the Baroque choir. Tuesdays are hectic. She should have chosen Saturday. On Saturdays, I visit my mother, the children are out, and he doesn’t have any classes to teach.’

I detest the word classes, which may explain why at that precise moment reality slid down the legs of the nightstand. As I continued speaking with my psychoanalyst, I attempted to bend over and pick up reality. He must have realized I was up to something, because he suddenly became annoyed.

‘But you aren’t listening to me,’ he snapped.

‘Of course I am. I hear you,’ I said in my defense. ‘Don’t be so impatient. Let’s try to analyze your feelings of anxiety about this new guy. ...’

‘Don’t mention him!’ he repeated. ‘I find his very existence intolerable, I can’t accept it. I don’t want to know anything about him. He’s disturbing my peace of mind. He’s an intruder. Besides, what would the first one say? I can’t understand why one lover wasn’t enough for her. After all, we’re talking about a good kid - intelligent, serious-minded, even handsome. She has no right to do this to him. I’m certain he has no idea about any of this. We might have even come to be friends - although I hate chemistry, which is his specialty.’

‘Wasn’t it botany?’ I asked innocently, holding the glass in one hand and the receiver in the other. Reality was hiding under the bed. I had to squat in a way that neither he nor reality would notice.

‘Botany, chemistry - it makes no difference,’ he said. ‘One of those horrible scientific fields that explains the world superficially. She adores simple explanations. The description of a tricotyledonus is enough to seduce her.’ With great difficulty, I managed to bend my knees. ‘To add insult to injury,’ he continued, ‘the world is full of tricotyledonuses.’

‘But according to you,’ I stated, not wanting to lose ground (by then I was almost on my knees), ‘he’s a professor of philosophy.’ ‘She believes that philosophy is a branch of chemistry,’ he remarked bitterly. ‘And now don’t try telling me that that’s proof of her intelligence, because I won’t accept that.’

‘There are too many things you’re unwilling to accept, my friend,’ I countered firmly. On my knees, I was able to look under the bed. ‘The question is, are you in a position not to accept?’ Cunningly, he evaded my question. ‘I don’t understand why she couldn’t make do with the first one,’ he said, whimpering once again. ‘It’ll come as such a blow to him. The poor guy is really in love. And at the moment, he’s working on a very difficult essay - about the effect of laser beams on frog pepsins. He won’t be able to take this blow.’

On the floor - I was down on my knees - I found two cigarette butts, an empty matchbox, and a sock I’d lost the day before. But reality remained in hiding, camouflaged by dust.

I tried to console him. ‘It’s always possible he’ll never find out.’

‘True, just like parents are the last ones to find out what their children are up to,’ he admitted. ‘But if they do something careless, like take a stroll arm in arm, or show up at the movies at the same time. . . .’

‘People no longer stroll arm in arm,’ I said. ‘In reality, I don’t think people stroll at all these days. As for the movies, it’s very dark in the theaters. I suppose it’s possible the three of them might run into one another before the lights are turned off. It would be a matter of slipping away in time.’

‘I don’t think she would,’ he replied. ‘She’s an exhibitionist. For example, she loves to go to the movies with me, even though there’s always the possibility that lover number one might see us together. That’s why I prefer to go in after the movie has started.’

‘The movie has always begun,’ I argued subtly, as I thought to myself, now I’ll catch it! I’d seen reality under the bed, behind an old shoe.

‘I hate beginnings almost as much as endings,’ he confided. ‘In reality, I’m only interested in what comes in the middle. That’s where everything acquires depth. Apart from that, the ending can always be found within a good beginning, which only undermines the denouement. But the middle can develop in so many ways.’

Either it wasn’t an old shoe or it wasn’t reality, because I couldn’t grasp either, not in any case without letting go of the receiver.

‘I notice that your voice sounds faint at times. What are you doing?’ he demanded to know.

‘It’s the telephone exchange,’ I lied. ‘There’s interference on the line.’

‘There’s always interference on the line,’ he said, categorically.

‘It has to do with the tension,’ I added.

‘A physical problem,’ he argued.

‘Impossible to control from a room,’ I stated.

‘Especially if the room is shuttered and dark.’

‘And no one has opened the windows.’

‘Because there’s something unbearable about light.’

‘The specks of dust that you begin to see, like an invasion of mysterious, sparkling, hungry particles.’

‘Last night, she came in through that door,’ he sobbed, ‘and she wasn’t with the usual man. She was with the other one.’

‘And you were afraid because you didn’t know him.’

‘She’d never introduced me to him before.’

‘But his face was vaguely familiar.’

‘Yes, it was vaguely familiar, like the face in a dream I had as a child.’

‘And you didn’t know what to say to him.’

‘I held out my hand. This hand. Then I rushed to wash it. I apologized. I felt I was annoying them.’

‘On how many previous occasions would you say you’ve been annoying?’

‘I think I’ve always been a slight annoyance, like something out of kilter. My hand is too cold or else it’s sweaty, my tone of voice is one note lower or higher than it should be, I make the witty remark a moment too soon or a moment too late. And then she comes in with this other guy.’

‘Into the dark room.’

‘I couldn’t bring myself to turn on the light.’

‘The invading particles.’

‘Or even to say, “Go away!” ’

‘Every act has its consequences.’

‘To be avoided, if possible.’

‘To refuse to act is to refuse to accept the consequences.’

‘The other party would commit the act anyway.’

‘Audaciously.’

‘Boldly. I hate his courage.’

‘Which exists in relation to its opposite.’

‘There are no people, just functions.’

‘And submissiveness, which presupposes the existence of an authority.’

‘Of power.’

‘In the face of which there are only two possibilities: rebellion or slavery. Which are interchangeable. Little by little, the hunter becomes the prey. And the prey, the hunter.’

‘That’s a very sound observation. Ah, it’s 4:50 now. Your session is over,’ my psychoanalyst decreed in his typical fashion. ‘I’ll see you again tomorrow afternoon. Remember, if for any reason you can’t attend, my secretary will charge you anyway. Goodbye.’ When I heard him hang up, I rushed to look under the bed. I thought I saw reality slithering across the wall. Like a tiny, dark patch of dust.