He Who Shapes (2 page)

subject of an assassination."

Erikson smiled then, his composure beginning to return.

"I assure you, doctor, I have never contemplated suicide, nor

have I any desire to stop living."

He produced a cigar and applied a flame to it. His hand

shook.

"When you came to me this summer," said Render, "you

stated that you were in fear of an attempt on your life. You were

quite vague as to why anyone should want to kill you"

"My position! You can't be a Representative as long as I

have and make no enemies!"

"Yet," replied Render, "it appears that you have managed it.

When you permitted me to discuss this with your detectives I

was informed that they could unearth nothing to indicate that

your fears might have any real foundation. Nothing."

"They haven't looked far enoughor in the right places.

They'll turn up something."

"I'm afraid not."

"Why?"

"Because, I repeat, your feelings are without any objective

basis.Be honest with me. Have you any information whatso-

ever indicating that someone hates you enough to want to kill

you?"

"I receive many threatening letters . . ."

"As do all Representativesand all of those directed to you

during the past year have been investigated and found to be the

work of cranks. Can you offer me one piece of evidence to

substantiate your claims?"

Erikson studied the tip of his cigar.

"I came to you on the advice of a colleague," he said, "came

to you to have you poke around inside my mind to find me

something of that sort, to give my detectives something to work

with.Someone I've injured severely perhapsor some damag-

ing piece of legislation I've dealt with . . ."

"And I found nothing," said Render, "nothing, that is, but

the cause of your discontent. Now, of course, you are afraid to

hear it, and you are attempting to divert me from explaining my

diagnosis"

"I am not!"

"Then listen. You can comment afterwards if you want, but

you've poked and dawdled around here for months, unwilling

to accept what I presented to you in a dozen different forms.

Now I am going to tell you outright what it is, and you can do

what you want about it."

"Fine."

"First," he said, "you would like very much to have an enemy

or enemies"

"Ridiculous!"

"Because it is the only alternative to having friends"

"I have lots of friends!"

"Because nobody wants to be completely ignored, to be an

object for whom no one has really strong feelings. Hatred and

love are the ultimate forms of human regard. Lacking one, and

unable to achieve it, you sought the other. You wanted it so

badly that you succeeded in convincing yourself it existed. But

there is always a psychic pricetag on these things. Answering a

genuine emotional need with a body of desire-surrogates does

not produce real satisfaction, but anxiety, discomfort-because

in these matters the psyche should be an open system. You did

not seek outside yourself for human regard. You were closed off.

You created that which you needed from the stuff of your own

being. You are a man very much in need of strong relationships

with other people."

"Manure!"

"Take it or leave it," said Render. "I suggest you take it."

"I've been paying you for half a year to help find out who

wants to kill me. Now you sit there and tell me I made the

whole thing up to satisfy a desire to have someone hate me."

"Hate you, or love you. That's right."

"It's absurd! I meet so many people that I carry a pocket

recorder and a lapel-camera, just so I can recall them all . . ."

"Meeting quantities of people is hardly what I was speaking

of.Tell me, did that dream sequence have a strong meaning

for you?"

Erikson was silent for several tickings of the huge wallclock.

"Yes," he finally conceded, "it did. But your interpretation of

the matter is still absurd. Granting though, just for the sake of

argument, that what you say is correctwhat would I do to get

out of this bind?"

Render leaned back in his chair.

"Rechannel the energies that went into producing the thing.

Meet some people as yourself, Joe Erikson, rather than

Representative Erikson. Take up something you can do with

other peoplesomething non-political, and perhaps somewhat

competitiveand make some real friends or enemies, preferably

the former. I've encouraged you to do this all along."

"Then tell me something else."

"Gladly."

"Assuming you are right, why is it that I am neither liked nor

hated, and never have been? I have a responsible position in

the Legislature. I meet people all the time. Why am I so neutral

a-thing?"

Highly familiar now with Erikson's career. Render had to

push aside his true thoughts on the matter, as they were of no

operational value. He wanted to cite him Dante's observations

concerning the trimmersthose souls who, denied heaven for

their lack of virtue, were also denied entrance to hell for a lack

of significant vicesin short, the ones who trimmed their sails to

move them with every wind of the times, who lacked direction,

who were not really concerned toward which ports they were

pushed. Such was Erikson's long and colorless career of

migrant loyalties, of political reversals.

Render said:

"More and more people find themselves in such circum-

stances these days. It is due largely to the increasing complexity

of society and the depersonalization of the individual into a

sociometric unit. Even the act of cathecting toward other per-

sons has grown more forced as a result. There are so many of

us these days."

Erikson nodded, and Render smiled inwardly.

Sometimes the gruff line, and then the lecture . . .

"I've got the feeling you could be right," said Erikson.

"Sometimes I do feel like what you describeda unit, something

depersonalized..."

Render glanced at the clock.

"What you choose to do about it from here is, of course, your

own decision to make. I think you'd be wasting your time to

remain in analysis any longer. We are now both aware of the

cause of your complaint. I can't take you by the hand and show

you how to lead your life. I can indicate, I can commiserate-but

no more deep probing. Make an appointment as soon as you

feel a need to discuss your activities and relate them to my

diagnosis."

"I will," nodded Erikson., "anddamn that dream! It got to

me. You can make them seem as vivid as waking lifemore

vivid . . . It may be a long while before I can forget it."

"I hope so."

"Okay, doctor." He rose to his feet, extended a hand. "I'll

probably be back in a couple weeks. I'll give this socializing a

fair try." He grinned at the word he normally frowned upon.

"In fact, I'll start now. May I buy you a drink around the

corner, downstairs?"

Render met the moist palm which seemed as weary of the

performance as a lead actor in too successful a play. He felt

almost
 
sorry
 
as he
 
said,
 
"Thank you,
 
but I have an

engagement."

Render helped him on with his coat then, handed him his

hat, saw him to the door.

"Well, good night."

"Good night."

As the door closed soundlessly behind him, Render recrossed

the dark Astrakhan to his mahogany fortress and flipped his

cigarette into the southern hemisphere. He leaned back in his

chair, hands behind his head, eyes closed.

"Of course it was more real than life," be informed no one in

particular. "I shaped it."

Smiling, he reviewed the dream sequence step by step,

wishing some of his former instructors could have witnessed it.

It had been well-constructed and powerfully executed, as weU

as being precisely appropriate for the case at hand. But then, he

was Render, the Shaperone of the two hundred or so special

analysts whose own psychic makeup permitted them to enter

into neurotic patterns without carrying away more than an

esthetic gratification from the mimesis of aberrancea Sane

Hatter. '

Render stirred his recollections. He had been analyzed

himself,
 
analyzed
 
and
 
passed
 
upon
 
as
 
a
 
granite-willed,

ultrastable outsidertough enough to weather the basilisk gaze

of a fixation, walk unscathed amidst the chimaerae of

perversions, force dark Mother Medusa to close her eyes before

the caducous of his art. His own analysis had not been difficult.

Nine years before (it seemed much longer) he had suffered a

willing injection of novocain into the most painful area of his

spirit. It was after the auto wreck, after the death of Ruth, and

of Miranda their daughter, that he had begun to feel detached.

Perhaps he did not want to recover certain empathies; perhaps

his own world was now based upon a certain rigidity of feeling.

If this was true, he was wise enough in the ways of the mind to

realize it, and perhaps he had decided that such a world had its