The Dice Man (31 page)

`I am the Dice Man.'

Hunched over and disheveled, I'm afraid it wasn't too impressive a moment. We stared at each other, separated by only six feet in the little bedroom off the hallway of Dr. Mann's museum mausoleum. Lil shook her head as if trying to clear it.

`What, if I may ask, is the dice man?'

Dr. Krum and Arlene again appeared, Dr. Krum carrying a black bag similar to those carried by general practitioners in the early nineteenth century. .

`You are better?' he said.

`Yes. Thank you. I will rise again.'

`Good, good. I have an anesthetic. You vant?'

`No. It won't be necessary. Thanks.'

`What is the dice man, Luke?' Lil repeated. She hadn't moved since entering the room. I saw Arlene start and felt her eyes upon me as I turned back to Lil.

`The Dice Man,' I said slowly, `is an experiment in changing the personality, in destroying the personality.'

`Is interesting,' Dr. Krum said.

`Go on,' Lil said.

To destroy the single dominant personality one must be capable of developing many personalities; one must become multiple.'

`You're stalling,' Lil said. `What is the dice man?'

'The Dice Man,' I said, and I shifted my gaze to Arlene; who, wide-eyed and alert, watched me as if I were an enthralling movie, `is a creature whose actions are decided from day to day by the roll of dice, the dice choosing from among options created by the man.'

There was a silence, which lasted perhaps five seconds.

`Is interesting,' Dr. Krum said. `But difficult with chickens: Another silence followed and I turned my eyes back to Lil who, straight, dignified and beautiful, raised now a hand to her forehead and rubbed softly just below the hairline. Her expression was one of shock.

`I - I never meant a thing to you,' she said quietly.

`But you did. I have to fight my attachment to you time and time again.'

`Come on, Dr. Krum, let's get out of here,' Arlene said.

Lil turned her head and looked away out the darkened window, oblivious of Arlene and Dr. Krum.

`You could do the things you did, to me, to Larry, to Evie,' because the dice . . .?' she finally said.

This time I didn't reply. Dr. Krum looked perplexed from me to Lil to me, shaking his head.

`You could use me, lie to me, betray me, mock, me, whore me and remain . . . happy: `For something greater than either of us,' I said.

Arlene had pulled Dr. Krum away and they disappeared out the door.

Lil looked down at the wedding ring on her left hand, felt its texture between her fingers, her face soft, wistful.

`Everything. . ' she shook her head slowly, dreamily. `Every thing between us for a year, no. No. For all, for all our lives, becomes ashes.'

`Yes,' I said.

`Because ... because you want to play your maniac, your adulterer, your hippie, your dice man.'

`Yes.'

`And what, what if I told you now,' Lil went on, `that for a year I've been having an affair with - I know it sounds silly but an affair with the garage attendant downstairs?'

'Lil, that's wonderful: pain flashed across her face.'

'What if I told you that tonight before coming here, in tucking the children in goodnight, in following a theory of mine to show detachment, I had ... I had strangled Larry and Evie?'

There we were opposite each other, an old married couple chatting about the- doings of the day.

`If it were done for a . . . a useful theory it would be..'

Greater love hath no man than this: that he lay down his children's lives for his theory. `You would, of course, kill them if the dice told you to,' Lil said.

`I don't think I'd ever give that particular option into the hands of the dice.'

'Only adultery, theft, fraud and treason; `I might give Larry and Evie into . the hands of the Die, but myself too.'

She was rocking now on her heels, her hands clenched in front of her, still immaculately beautiful.

`I guess I should be thankful,' she said. `The mystery is over But ... but it's not easy to have the death of the man you loved most in the world told to you by . . . by his corpse.'

`Interesting point,' I said.

Lil's head jerked back at my reply and her eyes widened slowly until, suddenly, she threw herself on me with a convulsive shriek, pulling my hair and then beating me with her fists. I hunched over to protect myself. but I felt so hollow inside that Lil's blows were like a gentle rain falling on an empty barrel. It occurred to me that it was long past time to consult the Die again. I wasn't interested. I didn't feel interested in anything. The blows stopped and Lil, crying loudly, ran toward the door. Arlene was standing there, looking terrified, and caught Lil in her arms. They disappeared, and I was alone.

As I sit here writing of that distant night, the tragedies and comedies bloom like flowers around me still, and I continue on from day to day or year to year to play a role, and certainly, sooner or later, I'll abandon that of dice man too. A role, a role. Star billing one day, walk-on the next. Vaudeville standup comic Shakespearian-fool. Alceste in the morning, Gary Cooper and a hippie during the day, Jesus at night. I no longer remember precisely when I stopped acting: when the fallen die began to click to life roles where there was no residual me fighting them and no dice man me feeling proud, only lives being lived. I do remember that alone in that room that night after Lil left I felt a full joyous uninhibited grief. I was in pain, I suffered, I was there.

And you, Friend, sprawled on your bed or sitting in your chair, you giggle perhaps as I slobber as Caliban, smile at my sufferings as an honest man, or sigh when I ponderously play the fool, philosophizing my madness, lecturing you on the metaphor of life as play. But I am the honest man - with all his senseless suffering for those who will feel; I am the fool. I've been Raskolnikov climbing the stairs, Julien Sorel hearing the clock strike ten, Molly Bloom writhing beneath the rhythmic push of Blazes Boylan's prick. Agonies are one of my changes of garments - fortunately not worn as often as my motley - of the fool.

And you, Reader, good friend and fellow fool my reader, you, yes you, my sweet cipher, are the Dice Man. Having read this far, you are doomed to carry with you burned forever in your soul the self I've here portrayed: the Dice Man. You are multiple and one of you is me. I have created in you a flea which will forever make you itch. Ah, Reader, you never should have let me be born. Other selves bite now and then no doubt. But the Dice Man flea demands to be scratched at every moment: he is, insatiable. You will never know an itchless moment again - unless, of course, you become the flea.

On the edge of the bed, alone, the party outside seeming to settle into precisely the businesslike buzz it manifested before, Luke Rhinehart sat hunched over, numbed. There was no retreat He was the Dice Man or he was no one. His body knew, dough he could not yet be aware consciously, that Luke Rhinehart was now an impossible existence. Numbed, he disturbed the Die by not consulting the watch for almost ten minutes. Then, having no place else to go, no one else to be, he took out the watch with the die and looked.

Slowly he straightened himself up and, standing, bowed his head in a brief prayer. Then he smoothed down his clothing and his hair and moved toward the party. He wanted first see his wife to abase himself before her. He walked down the hall to the living room and from the doorway squinted through the random clusters of faces, looking for her. Those talking and drinking paid him no special attention, but Mrs. Ecstein came up behind him and said that his wife was in Dr. Mann's office: He followed her down the hall and over the broken glass to the office. He found Dr. Mann and Dr. Ecstein standing awkwardly on either side of his wife, who sat, childlike, on the edge of Dr. Mann's consulting couch.

The sight of her, hunched over and small, her face pale but streaked with smeared eye shadow, her hair in disarray, an ugly man's sweater draped clumsily over her shoulders, knocked Dr. Rhinehart without conscious intention to his with his chest and head too lowering forward until he groveled at his wife's feet.

The room was silent that they could all hear quite distinctly from the centre of the house the ratatattat of Dr. Krum's laughter: `Forgive me, Lil, I am mad,' Dr. Rhinehart said.

Ne one spoke.

Rhinehart raised his head and chest from the floor to look at his wife and he said: `For what I have done there is no forgiveness in this world; but I am repentant. I . . . I have been purified ... by the hell that I am causing. I..' His eyes suddenly brightened with eagerness `I feel only love for you and for all here. The world can be a blessed place if we but love one another.'

'Luke, baby, what are you . . .?' Dr. Ecstein said, and he took a step forward as if to raise Dr. Rhinehart up but stopped.

`Beautiful, beautiful Jake, I'm talking about love.'

Dr. Rhinehart shook his head slowly as if confused, and a childlike smile appeared on his face. `I've been all mixed up, all wrong; love, loving, loveliness is all there is: He turned and stretched out his arms to his wife. 'Lil, my darling, you must realize that Heaven is here, is now, with me.'

His wife returned his gaze for a moment and then slowly raised her eyes to Dr. Mann beside her. A look of immense relief began to appear on her face.

`He is insane, isn't he?' she asked.

'I don't know,' Dr. Mann said. `Now, of course, but he keeps changing so. It may be only temporary.'

'You fools, we've all been insane,' Dr. Rhinehart said. `I but look at each of you and love. God is shining forth from each of you like fluorescent lights. Open your eyes and see: He was erect now on his knees, his fists clenched and his face strangely exalted.

`Better give him a shot of sodium amaytol, Tim,' Dr. Ecstein said to Dr. Mann in a whisper.

`I've only got pills here in the house,' Dr. Mann whispered back.

`Careless,' Dr. Ecstein said.

`But why why why,' Dr. Rhinehart began forcefully, `do you want to quiet God? I am among you spraying love and you do not hear, do not see, do not let it refresh you.'

He arose. `I must beg forgiveness of that poor innocent girl and show her my new love.'

And he abruptly strode from the room.

Down the hall and over the broken glass again and into the living room. Miss Welish was with Dr. Boyd beside the bookcase in one corner. When he went to them, Dr. Boyd came protectively between Dr. Rhinehart and the girl.

`What now, Luke?' he said.

`I am deeply sorry for the insane attack I made on you, Miss Welish. I sincerely regret it. Only now do I see the true meaning of love.'

Miss Welish, round-eyed, peeked around her escort's shoulder.

`Oh come off it, Luke,' Dr. Boyd said.

'You are beautiful; you are both beautiful, and I deeply regret having marred this wonderful evening.'

'I hope I didn't hurt you,' Miss Welish said.

'My pain was the initial source of my seeing the light. I can't thank you enough.'

'Any time,' Dr. Boyd said. `Come on, Joya, let's leave.'

`But I have to. . ' The voice of Miss Welish was lost behind the retreating figure of Dr. Boyd.

`You are better, true?' Dr. Krum said suddenly from below and beside Dr. Rhinehart as the two others moved away. The min, elderly former Big Deal was with him, and so was a fiftyish Important Person puffing on a pipe. As they began talking, Dr. Weinburger, president of PANY, the chubby middle-aged woman joined them.

`I am whole at last,' Dr. Rhinehart replied.

'What was this about the dice man, hey? Vas interesting.'

`The Dice Man is a deeply sick concept, totally lacking in love.'

`Seemed a bit schizophrenic the way Dr. Krum described it,' said Dr. Weinburger.

`But the idea of destroying the personality: is interesting,' Dr. Krum went on.

`Only if it shatters the shell which hides our love,' Dr. Rhinehart replied.

`Love?' Dr. Weinburger inquired.

`Our love.'

`Vat has love to do vith anything?' asked Dr. Krum.

`Love has something to do with everything. If I do not love I am dead.'

`How true,' the woman said.

`My whole recent life has been thrown away in a cold, mechanical dicelife. I see that now as clearly as your beautiful, handsome faces.'

'Luke, I'd like you to come outdoors with me for a few minutes now,' Dr. Ecstein's voice said at Dr. Rhinehart's side.

`I will, Jake, but I must explain something first to' Dr. Krum.' He turned to the little man beside him with a warm, pleading expression.

'You must stop your work with pigeons and work only with man. You can never approach what is essential to man's health and happiness through torturing chickens and pigeons. Schizophrenia is a failure to love, a failure to see loveliness. It will never be cured by a drug.'

`Oh, Dr. Rhinehart, you are being sentimental like poet,' Dr. Krum said.

`A single line of Shelley tells us more of man than all your chicken pigeon droppings ever can.'

`People haf been spouting love two thousand years. Nothing. With chemicals we change the world.'

'Thou shah not kill,' Dr. Rhinehart said.

We do not kill, only make psychotics.'

`You do not love your chickens.'

`Is impossible. No one who works with chickens can ever luf them.'

'A spiritual man loves all with a spiritual love that is never selfish, possessive or physical.'

`Oh, for Christ's sake, Luke Dr. Ecstein said.

`Precisely,' said Dr. Rhinehart. `Excuse me a moment.'

With the eminent physicians looking on, Dr. Rhinehart consulted his watch case. He groaned.

`Is late?'

Dr. Krum asked.

Dr. Rhinehart's eyes swiveled over the room like artillery radar seeking its target.

`I didn't know Dr. Rhinehart was an existentialist humanist,' the woman said.

`He's a nut,' Dr. Ecstein said, `even if he is my patient'

`Meetcha outside in five minutes, Jake. So long fellas,' Dr. Rhinehart said and strode off toward the entrance hall, but after passing a cluster of people behind the couch he veered to his right and went down the same hallway again.