The Seducers

by Martin Shepard

“‘We’ll talk about it next time,’ he said, which we didn’t. Because I never went back again. I could see where he was coming from. The big stick will solve all problems. But I wasn’t going for any program like that.”

  “Your honor,” Norman arose. “I ask that this testimony be stricken. It is conjectural, in no way substantiates Mr. Newfield’s claim that Dr. Lippman used patients for his own pleasures, and I would prefer not to enhance this speculative slur with serious cross-examination.”

  “Mr. Newfield?” Margolis tugged at his ear; his voice was perturbed. “Is there anything more substantive you are going to elicit from this witness?”

  “Other than introducing canceled checks that prove she was in therapy with Lippman, no.”

  Margolis hesitated, glared at Newfield, and said, “This testimony is inflammatory and is a terrible, terrible thing for counsel to have done.

  “Given the fact that no sexual intercourse is even claimed, I am going to strike this from the record on the court’s own order.”

  “Because of this unexpected witness,” Norman asked, “and in view of the fact that Miss Lewis has to identify certain photographs on Monday, I should like to request a postponement until then before pleading the defense’s case.”

  “Mr. Newfield, do you have any objections?” Given his chastisement, none were forthcoming. “Very well. Court is adjourned until Monday.”

  If Cynthia’s testimony was off the record, didn’t it still go in each juror’s ear, Jonas wanted to know. The judge realized her story was insubstantial, but did each housewife? The colonel? The teacher? The cabbie? Or the stone-faced engineer? Was their strategy still valid?

  “Sure,” crooned Norman as they left the courtroom. “It’s even better than I anticipated. Because of a flimsy witness we didn’t even have to telegraph the news that you wouldn’t be taking the stand.”

  “And what’s so good about that?”

  “The only thing that could lose our case now would be your letter. Just suppose Newfield had it. Why do you think he hasn’t introduced it? Because he’d wait for you to testify, try to trap you into making some statement, and then contradict you with your own note. Or let you simply try to bullshit your way out of it.

  “If he knew for sure you wouldn’t appear, he’d introduce it during “Name That Schlong” time. Now, assuming he’s trying to be cute with his evidence, he’s really up shit’s creek. By the time he gets the news, it will be too late to do anything about it.

  “Truth,” he mused. “‘The whole truth and nothing but the truth.’ How utterly ridiculous. It’s the illusion of truth that counts.”

  Outside, the sky was clear, the air unseasonably warm.

  “Mmmmm,” Norman sighed, stretching his arms. “It’s a good day to be alive.”

  So how come Jonas didn’t feel that way? He should be pleased, but he wasn’t. Something was terribly wrong, even if he couldn’t quite articulate it. He would win his case, but he still felt sick to his stomach. Or was it sick to his soul?

  “Say,” Norman asked. “Did I ever ask if you knew the definition of a jury?” He reached in his pocket for the perpetual cigar.

  “A collection of people determining justice?”

  “No,” Rosenkrantz answered, aglow with self-congratulation. “A jury is a collection of people deciding who has the smartest lawyer.”

  35

  “Ahhh, how I’ve developed a taste for the juice of the juniper berry,” Paul Cook waxed, one hand on the wheel of his Ford pickup, the other holding the pint bottle high, where it caught the sunlight coming through the windshield and diffused it into jewellike patterns. “Here,” he said. “Have a snort. You need it. But do me a favor, will you?”

  “Anything you say.”

  “Don’t mention it to Marge. She thinks I’m sousing more than I should. She’s right, too. I told her I’d cut down and I have. But this is a special occasion, hah? I don’t get to see old friends too often.”

  “Yes.” Jonas swallowed the mouth-puckering distillate straight from the flask. “It’s a special occasion.”

  The drive from Pawling was short, but long enough for them to finish the drink. A left turn off Route 22 led them along a meandering, forested country road. Another left, a right on a muddy, unpaved surface, and they arrived at the farm. Thirty-five acres alongside Fishkill Creek.

  “God’s country,” Paul burped, putting the empty bottle in the glove compartment. “A man would be crazy indeed to ever leave this place.”

  He pulled to the side of the two-story clapboard house with its peeling white paint. “Dilapidated but dignified,” Paul grunted as he watched Jonas eye the old structure warily. “An honest house. No frills, but built by craftsmen. Stood up a hundred years and it’ll stand a hundred more.”

  Exiting from the truck, Jonas’ feet sank in the soft earth of the driveway. At the front door he started to scrape his shoes off.

  “It don’t worry us none,” Paul said. “A little honest dirt never hurt anybody.

  “Hey Marge,” he bellowed, as he pushed the front door open. “Guess who’s here? It’s Lover Boy!”

  Lover Boy. Christ! No one could combine warmth and grossness, wit and wisdom, in quite the same proportions as this fifty-eight-year-old, shaggy-headed red-beard. Tall and erect, courtly and profane, he ran his spread with the same sureness he once brought to the research ward of the Psychiatric Institute.

  “Jonas,” the rotund hausfrau beamed as she bustled down the staircase. “It’s so good to see you.” At the landing Marge enveloped him in a warm embrace, then stepped back, still holding his hands, her face growing somber. “We’ve been reading all about you. Rough,” her head started nodding sympathetically. “I can see it’s been hard on you.”

  “That’s what you’ve got to expect when you’re God’s gift to women, hah?” as a big thump on the back from Paul’s ham-hock hand nearly caused him to upchuck the gin they’d imbibed after he’d been picked up at the bus depot.

  “Honestly,” Marge winced, admonishing her husband.

  “Ahhh, c’mon. Any man who’s up to therapeutic hanky-panky ought to be able to take some good-natured ribbing.”

  He looked at Jonas questioningly and their eyes met and held in silent understanding. Paul saw his predicament perfectly and, like Carlo, accepted him. The importance of this acceptance—this love—was the one bright thing he had going for him. And it was a great relief to know he wouldn’t have to rehash all the bloody details.

  “How was the ride up?” Marge asked as Paul disappeared down the hallway.

  “Not bad. We caught a little traffic leaving the city. Took the driver nearly two hours.”

  “That’s par for the course. One of the reasons we’re so out of touch. Paul’s been so excited since you called last night. He loves visitors but there aren’t that many people interested in grape farming or in traveling that long to hear the opinions of an old eccentric.”

  “How’s he been?” Jonas inquired.

  “Different, but good, on the whole. Leaving his practice has given him a peculiar sense of accomplishment. His mind is freer. Sometimes too free, maybe?” She giggled in embarrassment. “But he seems happier substituting ‘real work for the therapy racket.’ And as long as the grape crop covers the food and mortgage payments, who’s to argue with him?”

  “And you?”

  “You know me. I’m a mother first, a country girl second, and a pediatrician third. The kids are great, the atmosphere a lot more relaxed than in Westchester, and I’ve got a job covering the local hospital weekends as a day officer. Not too interesting, but it keeps my hand in. And the extra money is good protection against a spring frost.”

  The toilet roared, a hall door opened, and the eccentric wandered back, zipping up his fly.

  Marge leaned over, stood on tiptoes and kissed Jonas’ cheek. “I’ve got to be off for work. But I had to say hello, first. Take care of my old man, now,” she said, taking her coat from the rack, gathering her purse, and
departing.

  “Where are the kids?” Jonas asked, not seeing any of the seven.

  “They’re all off today. Doing an overnight hike west of Stormville, north of the Appalachian Trail. Good kids, all of them. And they’ve picked up real skills out here, not just academic bullshit. They can build, track, hunt, farm, live off the land. Drop ’em in the middle of the Amazon basin and they’d each come out of it alive. But come on. Let me show you around.”

  He put his arm about Jonas’ shoulder and whisked him out the front door, past the newly seeded garden and by the hog pen, where, “if you’re still here tomorrow, you can help me and the boys kill and dress old Bozo. Come to think of it, you can stay as long as you like.”

  The thought of transforming that friendly, bristled, sniffing waddler into bacon, chops and sausage was unappealing.

  “That’s the problem with education today,” Paul said as they circumnavigated the budding grape fields. “Too much stress on the abstract, none on simple survival. We abound with theoretical resolutions of every conceivable problem, but with every solution the mess only multiplies.

  “Understanding. Another illusion. I’ll bet you thought you understood that woman, Arlene Lewis, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. At first.”

  “But you did not, did you?”

  “No. I didn’t. She was crazier than I thought.” He took out a cigarette, offered one to Paul, and the two men lit up.

  They were standing on a small rise and Paul, in his matted sheepskin jacket, surveyed his domain. A radiant blue sky with three light cirrus clouds. A hawk, circling a distant field. The waters of the creek dancing through breaks in the pines that lined its course.

  “I believe in the theory of total projection—that all of life is an endless series of assumptions. Truth and understanding exist only when you and someone else project on the same wavelength.

  “What’s crazy, anyway? The lunatic is a minority of one. If I’m nuts and you believe everything I’m saying, we’re both nuts. When a third person believes us there are three of us nuts. Finally, there are nine nuts and only one sane man. Who’s the lunatic? He is.

  “So much for crazies. And a neurotic is anybody I don’t like.

  “The rest, despite the hundreds of psychoanalytic theories, comes down to behavior. As long as you don’t scare me too much, I won’t call the cops.

  “You know the most effective question I ever asked a crazy?”

  “No, what?” Jonas found himself mesmerized by Paul’s peripatetic monologues. Aristotle in a hillbilly’s disguise, wandering the hills of Putnam County, a dutiful student in tow.

  “I discovered it a few years before I quit the Psychiatric Institute. It took me that long to overcome my education and begin to see the obvious.

  “When a new customer came into our hospital, the first thing I’d do is ask, ‘Who did you scare to get yourself into this nut house?’ It’s nothing but common sense. In asking the question, I also gave them their egos back.

  “Wheehew!” He lifted his stained leather hat and wiped his brow with the sleeve of his jacket. “I’m glad I’m out of that game. Psychoanalysis, too often, is an illness that pretends to be a cure.”

  “Why do you say that?” Jonas asked, sensing the old man’s motor running down and eager to start his verbal pump flowing again. “Doesn’t talk help?”

  “Sure talk helps. Revelation and the sharing of common experiences can be an unburdening of the soul. But revelations can be made to anyone. It’s not a trade secret. Those made in analysts’ offices are often poorer, because they’re so onesided. My beef with therapy came the day I woke up and realized I was simply being used as a paid friend. Remember that old TV show, ‘Palladin’? Gun for hire?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, I was Cook, ear for hire. And that was when I was at my best. Except that a friend wouldn’t make money off someone else’s miseries.”

  “And at your worst?”

  “At my worst I was interpretive. ‘Do you see this?’ ‘Why do you say that?’ Focusing on self-awareness like all the other therapists; overemphasizing the rational mind. Like the rest of the Goddamned educational system.

  “I am one of those souls who have been cursed with self-awareness—tortured by knowing too much. And patients—my patients, your patients—all suffer from that exact same illness.

  “So what’s the cure for this psychic aggravation? More self-consciousness? More reason? No. Involvement in the necessities of life!

  “It’s all in a paper I wrote twenty years ago on Hans Vaihinger, a neo-Kantian and an existentialist to the very core. ‘In intuition and experience,’ he said, ‘all distress fades into nothingness. Experience and intuition are higher than all human reason. When I see a deer feeding in the forest, when I see a child at play, when I see a man at work, but above all, when I myself am working or playing, where are the problems with which I had been torturing myself unnecessarily?’

  “Had enough?” he asked, a twinkly look in his eye. “Enough walking? Enough of my far-out, disconnected mind-fucks?”

  “I wouldn’t mind returning to the house, but I don’t want you to stop talking.”

  “Talking? Rambling is more like it. But I love an audience, and you’re stuck. It’s good for me to clear my system, as long as you don’t take anything I say too seriously.”

  With that, they turned around and headed for the house, some half-mile distant. In moments, Paul was off on another discourse.

  “The whole secret of the therapy game is to come up with a rap that interests a widow who puts up a big pile of money which gets you your own publishing house so that you can print your own shit. Every one of these guys—Freud, Jung, Adler, Sullivan, Janov—there are hundreds of these kinds of deals going on. Then it was the Esalen Foundation. Next the Maharishis. Pimply faced kids claiming to be perfect masters. Transcendental Meditation, offering some Sanskrit syllables for a price. It’s all part of the endless divisiveness of ideology.

  “I couldn’t charge patients any more, because no one has an original idea. I can give priceless information, but I got it from someone else. If anyone wants to talk to me, I say, ‘Come on up here and I’ll talk to you for free.’ But people are suspicious of that. They’ve all been brainwashed into thinking that they can get the real goods only by paying high prices for it. More crap.

  “Happily, psychiatry seems on the way out. Most of it is pure horseshit and not even relevant to what is happening in the world any more. The same articles that were written about the ministry in 1935—I’ll bet you didn’t know I was a ministerial student before I went into medicine, did you?”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “I was, indeed. Three generations of Lutheran ministers in my family. Well … they were writing things like “How to Make Your Ministry Relevant.” Recently I read a paper in a therapeutic journal, “Making Psychiatry Relevant.” It’s really come full circle, hah? Not only that, but here I am on my pulpit again.”

  The full circle had also brought them back to the farmhouse. Paul opened the back door. A chicken, pecking in the yard, darted inside.

  “He’s probably looking for his friends,” Paul said. “My youngest had eight of them inside yesterday and only six of ’em came out this morning.”

  Their walk had taken the better part of an hour. It was nearly one-thirty.

  “Fix you some lunch?” Paul asked.

  “Sure.” Jonas felt hungry; the first affirmative response his stomach had given him in nearly a week. There’s something digestible in this seedy atmosphere, he thought, as he watched Paul heat the stew he’d prepared the day before. A few flies buzzed above the stove.

  “We’ve had ’em all winter,” Paul said as he watched Jonas trace their flight. “But I have trouble killing things I don’t eat.”

  Ladling the stew into bowls, Paul asked if he’d like any wine. Before the answer was out, two empty jam jars were set upon the table and filled from a gallon of homebrewed vintage.


  “To you,” Paul toasted, fixing him with a knowing stare. “May you find the answers to your questions. Assuming, of course, you’re still at that stage.”

  “Is there any other?” Jonas winced, downing half of his jarful quickly.

  “Very definitely,” Paul retorted, noisily slurping his spoonful. “It’s the Gertrude Stein story of the dying Irishman. All of his friends are sitting about watching him toss and turn on his deathbed.

  “‘Ah. Paddy’s wrestling with Ultimates. I wonder what the answers are?’

  “At three A.M. Paddy opens his eyes and rises. ‘Answers? What are the questions?’”

  “Questions?” Jonas chuckled, pouring more white wine while feeling increasingly heady and mellow. “I’d be happy to feed him several dozen.”

  “No wonder,” Paul empathized. “You’re caught in the worst straits possible: between the Scylla of psychiatry and the Charybdis of law. The two most parasitical professions ever to blight the planet. Bloodsuckers. Each with opinions and prescriptions for every problem affecting mankind.”

  “So you’re down on law, too.”

  Finishing his meal, Paul carried the plates to the sink and began rinsing them.

  “I read in the papers the other day where an illegally discharged government employee had to hire a $250 an hour lawyer to win his job back. $250 an hour! This wasn’t any Emmett Bennet Williams, either. And I used to think that a psychiatric fee of $60 an hour was criminal. This lawyer wasn’t outrageous. He was obscene. Naturally, he won his case.

  “No wonder poor Justice wears a blindfold. The scales she carries tip in favor of whomever puts in the most gold. And the blindfold keeps her from seeing which attorney takes it out.

  “Here,” he said, handing Jonas the glass jars. “You take the glasses, I’ll carry the jug. We’ll go into my study and talk more there.”

  He followed Paul down another hallway off the kitchen, entering a modestly sized room. Like the rest of the house, it was crudely yet effectively furnished. Bare unpainted walls. Chairs in two varieties—tree stumps, cut and shaped by hand for adequate sitting, and threadbare, upholstered hand-me-downs with broken springs. Jonas sprawled on just such a sofa, surprised to find it comfortable. Paul plopped himself into an old swivel chair in front of an ancient rolltop desk. Behind him was the one filled wall, covered from top to bottom with well-worn books and journals on philosophy, religion, and psychiatry, including a set from his grandfather, leather-bound and in the original German. Settling in, Jonas lifted his glass to Paul, who continued where he’d left off.