A & Q: at the
Psychologist Office:
Did he love his wife? Dr. Sterling was pondering,
or had he been bored with her? There he sat a few feet away, why not ask
him? He had or gave the appearance he
did get bored with her, and she was a faithful wife so he had learned, ‘But I bet that he
never really, and truly never loved her. So what?’ Thought the
psychologist, talking to himself. ‘He had made his
life out of complications and drama, and boredom, yet filled his human commitments,
so he did not hurry for the funerals, that’s the answer.’ The psychologist
feared to say this out loud lest he give him an excuse to deny it. He did admit
to the psychologist, on his wedding day he was simply less bored. Now with the
deaths, the return of silence and the evening’s mildness had come back, that he
had before his marriage, this too he admitted was a plus. This was the way
Nippon thought. He knew he was
hardhearted, not usable by God, as he proclaimed, for God demands an open
heart, but more often than not, openhearted people were in a class of their
own, in a governing class of hypocrisy, like the psychologist, like King Saul,
and that is why God gave the throne to King David, his soul was open, it had
not deserted God at the last hour.
Oh
Nippon thought of his wife, now dead, without making any effort, but he might
have thought of other things just as well. And it perhaps was of difficulty in
recovering his good spirits, but he didn’t need any stimulants, he was either
stimulated or depressed all his life, now life was simply less easy for him,
for the moment.
. . .
The psychologist asked, “What would you have liked
to have been two-hundred years ago?”
Without hesitation, “A negro slave trader. You see, they weren’t queasy
in those days, they had assertions, they announced ‘Look here, I’m a
man of means, wealth, I have a slave trade, I have as much black flesh as you
have gold coins.’ Can you imagine Doc,
anyone publicly saying that today? What
an outrage it would bring!”
“But
you could,” said the psychologist.
“In a
heartbeat, I wouldn’t hesitate if it was legal.”
“So,” inferred the
psychologist, “you’re for slavery?”
“I
didn’t say that—I said, if it was established, I am certainly not for it, I am
against it. But if it was established it would be for me quite natural a trade,
not boasting about, but taking it to its limits. Now you can see where I’m
headed I believe, these were some indifferent people, you’d have a massive
hoard to heal in those days if you thought the way you do today, back then. All
English speaking people thought the same way, all of South America, and parks
of Africa, they all believed in slave trading, even in Peru, so am I so
different? You would have been the black sheep back then, and sent to the
sanitarium with your modern day thoughts. They believed in slavery, as no more
than having fresh air to breath. Don’t you agree? Plus, back in those far-off
days in Ethiopia, the Ethiopians had white slaves, and thought no more of it
than our southern Alabama folk, in the 1860s.”
The
psychologist had no answer, the asked, “With no wife and no children what will you do
now?”
“Buy a
dog,” said Nippon, “when I get angry he can’t talk back. Thus I get the last
word, and as you readily know, there is to every point of issue, a
counterpoint, and the dog doesn’t know that, he can be dominated, but a woman
does.”
# 3-22-2016
Part of the story “Anthills of Lima”
