Michael Gray Novels Page 2

  3

  Gray got home late that night from the psychiatric society’s meeting. He lived in a small apartment on Telegraph Hill, and outside his living room window was a steep garden dominated by a pepper tree. Tonight the broad view was blanked out by fog that had rolled up from the bay.

  “On little cat feet,” Gray thought, as a thump sounded from the bedroom and a fat gray cat rushed across the carpet. “Sandburg wouldn’t have written that if he’d known Julia.”

  Julia had acquired her name when she was a demure kitten, so graceful that Gray had immediately thought of the liquefaction of her clothes and named her appropriately. Now, some years later, Julia was much more like the Wife of Bath. She was a handsome, unpredictable cat, with a low sense of humor and a deep interest in tomcats. She had kittens regularly, a great problem until Gray managed to find homes for them.

  Gray lived alone, except for Julia. He had married when he was twenty-one, a medical student who had enlisted in the Air Force, and in a world altered by war, marriage had been a little too quick. He had never really regretted it, but he knew, in a coldly rational way, that he would be a happier man if he and Rosalind had never met—or married. She had been a nurse, and she had been killed by an exploding bomb less than six months after their marriage.

  That changed the direction of Gray’s life when he put on civilian clothes again. He had seen and felt what war could do. He came back with a realization that the world itself had nearly died in the throes of a gigantic sickness. And Rosalind had died. There were other reasons for Gray’s decision, of course; after his own psychoanalysis, he knew more about these. But what he learned only confirmed his wish to practice healing in the area where the most help was needed.

  It took a long time. The only instrument a psychoanalyst uses, ultimately, is his own personality, and this must be understood before it can be handled with the skilled precision with which a surgeon uses his instruments. Gray was still learning, as he knew he would always continue to learn.

  Julia was stropping herself heavily against his legs. Gray bent down and rubbed the cat gently under her chin. Deeply offended, she went away and sat with her back toward him, her tail-tip twitching slightly.

  “When I understand your motives, I’ll consider myself graduated,” Gray told the cat. She radared one ear contemptuously toward him. He Went into the kitchen, wanned some milk, and poured it into a blue crockery dish labeled “Madam.” The slight rattle brought Julia galloping in. Gray left his cat noisily drinking and wandered into the bedroom, discarding clothes as he went. He took a shower, but his muscles still ached. A sedentary life. Somehow, he’d find time for golf—perhaps tomorrow.

  Suppose I told you I’d committed a murder?

  Pajama-clad, Gray mixed himself a drink and sat by the window, watching the ghostly loom of the pepper tree through the glass.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. He felt tired. Superficially, today’s interview with Howard Dunne had been a perfectly ordinary one. Actually, it had been a violent battle on the invisible level of emotion. And these campaigns could never be planned in advance. Moreover, Gray had no idea whether or not he could accept Howard Dunne as a patient.

  The man needed help. He had a serious problem, although a good deal of his story was undoubtedly false. Still, part of the psychoanalyst’s skill lies in his willingness to be fooled in the early interviews.

  What Dunne had wanted—part of him, anyway—had been rejection. He had tried desperately to gain that end, even to the point of suggesting that he had committed a murder.

  Perhaps he had.

  There was nothing Gray could do until tomorrow. But, watching the shrouding veils of fog, he felt a familiar surge of sympathy. Sickness of the soul … the sickness of the emotions, that has power to destroy a man or a world—or a woman, killed a long time ago by the mass neurosis of war.

  That’s what I’m working for, Gray thought. Oh, I’ll marry again. I found out I couldn’t go on living with a ghost. But she’ll live, somehow, in my work.

  Gray shut his eyes and let his thoughts swing idly, un-anchored.

  Immediately, from the hidden depths of his mind, a word swam up.

  Dangerous.

  Yes, that was it. But what was the danger?

  The cat sprang to Gray’s lap, settled down, and lay purring gently. Gray stroked the silken fur. He followed his thoughts again, probing, searching for the associations that might lead him to the unconscious memory that troubled him.

  He did not find the memory. He continued to search, adding all he had sensed or felt about Howard Dunne. And he saw something so obvious that he had almost overlooked it.

  Why had this first interview left him so tired?

  There had been even more strain involved than he had consciously recognized. But, unconsciously, his mind must have reached out to meet the secret part of Howard Dunne’s mind, and recognized something there that had instantly mobilized it into urgent action. Gray knew what could make him react in that way. It was part of his old dream of a girl standing waiting in the London blackout, while the drone of planes grew louder, and he could not move to save her. The dream no longer recurred, but the memory remained.

  He had seen someone swaying on the edge of the abyss, and had reached out a hand to pull Dunne back from the brink of darkness.

  So now Gray knew, and he also knew that tomorrow, or at least very soon, he would have to make the sort of decision he always hated to make, because so much depended on it. More than a man’s life was at stake. If Gray made the wrong move, he might very easily push Dunne over the edge, into the abyss that meant the ruin of a man’s mind.

  “I’ve got to be careful,” he thought. “No matter how much trouble he may be in, I’ve got to be very careful.”

  4

  Howard Dunne walked into the office at four o’clock. He laid a typewritten yellow paper on Gray’s desk and sat down. So did Gray.

  “There it is,” Dunne said. “All the stuff about my background. Date of birth. Army record. Name of my doctor. Sorry about the lousy typing.”

  “Thank you,” Gray said, and picked up the paper. Dunne was apparently a good typist, but there were a good many strike-overs.

  Howard Dunne had been an only child. And he was still a child when the depression of the Thirties clamped down. His mother had been a semi-invalid; his father had been killed fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Then Howard Dunne had gone to live with an uncle. When World War Two began, Dunne had enlisted, like Gray, in the Air Force. But, unlike Gray, Dunne had served in the European theatre. He had an excellent combat record. After the war, Dunne had drifted to San Francisco and got a job with an advertising agency. Five years ago, he had married. That was all.

  Gray glanced across the desk at Dunne. The man sat rigidly in the chair, his hands clasped in his lap. The psychoanalyst said, “This is helpful. But I’ve still got some questions to ask. Cigarette?”

  “Thanks,” Dunne said, his voice tense.

  Gray pushed the typewritten paper away, noticed the almost imperceptible tightening of Dunne’s mouth, and picked up the paper again. He said, “I notice you’ve x’d out a few words. After you mentioned going to live with your uncle, for example. It looks like—” he held the paper up to the light, “—to stay out of trouble. Is that right?”

  Dunne nodded.

  “And after your combat record, you’ve x’d out something about a court-martial.”

  “Well, it never got that far. My C.O. hated my guts. He threatened me with a court-martial, but he knew he couldn’t make it stick. It was a personal thing. He got me transferred out instead.”

  “I see. Then the next thing is I’d like to talk to your doctor. Is that all right with you?”

  Dunne hesitated.

  “I’m all right physically,” he said. “My doctor would just tell you the same thing. Doctors—”

  “Yes?”

  “I told you I’d seen four people already. A couple of psychiatrists and a psychoanal
yst and a neurologist. One interview was enough. So damn many questions! I felt like a piece of machinery being tinkered with. A proximity fuse.”

  All Gray said was, “What’s the matter?” But his tone held a warmth and sympathy to which Dunne immediately responded.

  “Oh, there’s no way out,” he said. “I guess the trouble is marriage and settling down. I used to be able to blow off steam but now I’m a respectable member of the community. If I raised a little hell, there’d be publicity. I suppose I just want to find a safe way to blow off.”

  “You’re doing it,” Gray said.

  Dunne blinked. Then he pushed his chair back a little from the desk. Gray leaned back in his own chair, and noted the slight flicker of relief cross Dunne’s face. Already the psychoanalyst was charting the pattern of Dunne’s unconscious reactions.

  “Oh, it’s no good,” Dunne said. “I can’t think. I can’t talk. I’m afraid….”

  “What do you think I’ll do?”

  “I don’t know. Have me locked up.” He paused. Gray waited. Finally Dunne said flatly, “My sister-in-law was killed five months ago. Eleanor Pope. Mrs. Samuel Pope.”

  “What happened?”

  “A mugging,” Dunne said. “Somebody smashed in her head and took her purse. And her jewelry. It was late at night. One of those foggy nights, near the Presidio. … It was my fault.”

  “Why?”

  “It always is,” Dunne said. “Wherever I am, people get hurt. It’s that damned proximity fuse. When I get too close to people, something’s apt to happen. It might even happen to you.” He gave the analyst a curiously triumphant glance.

  Gray showed no reaction at all, and Dunne seemed faintly disappointed. After a moment he said quickly, “Anyway, Eleanor was killed. I’d promised to take her out that night, but I had to work. If I’d gone with her, she’d be alive now. So you see it was my fault. I killed her.”

  The argument rang hollow.

  Gray said, “Yesterday you asked me what I’d do if you told me you’d committed a murder. Is this what you meant?”

  Dunne nodded.

  “How did you feel about Eleanor?”

  “It isn’t Eleanor. It’s Mary. My wife. I …”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m afraid she’ll die.”

  “Why?”

  Suddenly Dunne stood up, walked to the door, and opened it. He glanced back at Gray. The analyst hadn’t moved.

  “Where’s my pipe?” Dunne asked.

  “In my desk. Do you want it?”

  “No,” Dunne said, and watched Gray intently. There was a sudden, violent tension in the air.

  “All right,” Gray said easily. “I’ll keep it for you, for a while.”

  The tension was gone. Dunne drew a long breath and let it out in a sigh. He came back and sat down again.

  “I wonder if I can talk to you,” he said. “I don’t suppose I can. But there’s nobody else. If they lock me up, it’ll be the finish. And if they don’t—I still can’t go on this way. I’ll tell you something.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I was lying to you yesterday.”

  “Most people do, at first,” Gray said.

  Dunne looked blank. Then he said, “Don’t you give a damn?”

  The analyst said, “Lying to others doesn’t usually cause as much trouble as lying to one’s self. But there’s always a good reason for a lie, if you can find it. That’s why a lie can often lead you to the truth, if you dig. Sometimes it takes a lot of digging.”

  Dunne said, “I know what the truth is. I told you my wife had signed commitment papers. Well, the truth is that she hasn’t. Not yet, anyway. But Sam Pope—my brother-in-law—wants her to. He keeps needling me. He wants me to take a nice rest in a sanitarium—and he knows what that would do to me!”

  “Let’s see if I’ve got this straight,” Gray said. “You feel responsible for Eleanor Pope’s death. And Eleanor was married to Sam Pope, your brother-in-law, the one who keeps needling you. Is that right?”

  Dunne nodded.

  “That’s right. Sam and Eleanor got married during World War Two. But that’s all water under the bridge now. The thing is, what am I going to do?”

  “Perhaps we can find out Let me ask you a question. Do you think you’re sick?”

  “Oh, don’t soft-pedal it. You mean do I think I’m crazy?”

  “Okay,” Gray said. “Do you think you’re crazy?”

  “Hell, no!”

  “Then do you think you’re emotionally healthy?”

  Dunne opened his mouth and closed it. Presently he said almost inaudibly, “No. I’m … in trouble, all right.”

  Gray nodded.

  “Before we go on,” he said, “I’d like to know if you’d have any objection to my talking to your wife.”

  “You wouldn’t try to make her sign—”

  “Commitment papers?” Gray asked. He laughed. “Come along and listen in if you like. I just want to ask her some questions.”

  Dunne said, “She can’t tell you anything I can’t. I don’t see why all this is necessary. What I’d hoped … I’d just as soon nobody knew I was being psychoanalyzed.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to … keep things separate. Those other people I saw—Sam arranged the appointments. But I found you myself.”

  Gray said, “If we decide analysis would be helpful, is there anyone you wouldn’t mind knowing about it?”

  Dunne gave Gray a quick, wary look.

  “Why should anyone have to know?” he asked.

  “No one has to know except us,” Gray said. “But it seems to me there’s a pretty important question involved. It’s this. Exactly why do you want therapy?”

  There was a long pause. Finally Dunne said slowly, “I guess I’m afraid. It’s this … pressure. It has to blow off. It keeps building. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Sometimes I think the only safe thing to do is stay still. But if I do that, the pressure keeps building, and I—I feel like two men. I can’t be sick and I can’t not be sick. I can’t love and I can’t hate. I am two men. I’ve got to—but I can’t!”

  He stopped. His forehead glistened with beads of perspiration.

  Gray waited.

  Dunne went on in a thick, unsteady voice, “Every time I blow off, Sam and Mary feel I’m—going insane. They push me. They say I need help. My God, I know I do. But the more they push, the more scared I get. I can’t go on much longer. And I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t know!”

  “Neither do I,” Gray said. “It isn’t easy. Psychoanalysis sometimes takes a long time. And usually the patient gets worse before he gets better.”

  “He gets worse?”

  “Psychotherapy tries to make unconscious conflicts conscious. But these conflicts are suppressed in the first place because they’re too painful. Digging them up is a disturbing business at first. The other part is that a patient’s friends and relatives often don’t want him to change, especially when the change is disturbing. They may not know it—they may consciously think they’re trying to help—but that’s part of the problem. If they know in advance what to expect, it often helps.”

  Dunne nodded slowly.

  “I can see that,” he said. “You mean I’d be bucking Mary and Sam all the way?”

  “Well, let’s say part of the way. If your doctor and your family knew what to expect, there’d be less chance of extra pressure being put on you.”

  “Do you want to talk to Sam too?”

  “It might help.”

  Dunne scowled at his hands. “Oh, the hell with it. Go ahead. And my doctor’s name is Felix Bronson.”

  Gray made a note.

  “Any more questions?” Dunne asked, rather resentfully.

  “Quite a few,” the analyst said. He asked them, although he knew he could not entirely believe the answers. But they were necessary, and they could be checked later anyway. And, as he had mentioned, a lie is an important clue—perhaps more important than the tru
th—to understanding a man’s personality. For the mind is built of both reality and fantasy, and neurosis occurs when the distinction between them is lost.

  Finally he said, “You could see me three days a week, and you could pay twenty dollars a session without any financial problem coming up?”

  “Yes. You’ll do it, then?”

  Gray hesitated.

  “I want you to understand what’s involved,” he said. “It won’t be an easy, simple job. Or a short one. If you were older, I’d advise something else. For there are risks. I may not be able to help you very much.”

  “I don’t care,” Dunne said. “Anything will be easier than this. The way I’ve been going.”

  The psychoanalyst nodded.

  “It isn’t as easy as it looks, though,” he pointed out. “In this office, you’ll need to say everything that comes into your head. Very often, you won’t want to. But it’s necessary.”

  “… Everything?”

  “Yes,” Gray said. “That’s one of the most important things in this kind of therapy. If you hold out on me, I won’t be able to help you. So if you’ve any doubts about this, we ought to discuss them now.”

  “But you’d find out anyway, wouldn’t you?”

  “How could I?” Gray asked. “Psychoanalysts aren’t mind-readers. If they’re competent, they can usually tell when a patient is withholding information, but they’ve no way of knowing what the information is—unless the patient tells them. Do you see what I mean?”

  Dunne said, “Yes, I see. It’s up to me. It depends on whether I let you diagnose me, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s pretty close,” Gray said.

  Dunne said, “I’ll tell you the truth.”

  “It’s easier that way, in the long run,” the analyst said. “Then suppose we try a few sessions before we decide? What about Monday, at this same time?”

  “All right.”

  “One more thing. I’ll get in touch with your wife and your brother-in-law. And your doctor. Do you want to be present when I see them?”

  “What do you think?”