The Last Collection (29 page)

“Look, you asked for me to come down here, so the least you could do is tell me how you got here.”

“I told you. I had a little accident.”

“What kind of accident? . . . Were you in a crash?”

Kerner shrugged.

“Look, Kerner, why did you send for me?”

“I don't really know.”

Dr. Lehman stared down at Artie Kerner for a moment. “It's been over three months since you were in to see me. . . . How is it that you stopped coming?”

“Just like that.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes, just like that.”

“You still owe me a hundred dollars, Mr. Kerner.”

“Don't worry, you'll get paid.”

“I'm not worried, Kerner. Like I once told you . . . I can buy and sell you. So believe me, I'm not worried about a lousy hundred dollars. I was just mentioning it for the record.”

“Okay, so now you mentioned it,” Kerner replied.

The doctor hesitated. He looked up at the ceiling as though thinking. “Mr. Kerner, I detect a change in you. You seem somewhat different from the last time I saw you.”

“Maybe I am.”

Dr. Lehman nodded. “Yes . . . maybe you are.”

Kerner turned his head towards Dr. Lehman. “Would you mind lighting me a cigarette. They're on the table beside the bed.” The doctor took a cigarette from the pack and lit it. “Just put it between my lips and give me a drag,” Kerner said. “As you see, I can't hold it too well myself.” Kerner gestured with his head towards his arms which were both in casts from the shoulder to the tips of his fingers.

The doctor put the cigarette between Kerner's lips. Kerner dragged and Dr. Lehman withdrew the cigarette.

“You can put it out. I just wanted a drag.”

Dr. Lehman stubbed the cigarette. He walked towards the end of Kerner's bed and picked up the medical chart that hung there. “How long have you been here?” he asked.

“About two months.”

The doctor held the chart up in front of him and studied it. “From the look of this chart, Mr. Kerner, it appears that almost every bone in your body is broken.”

“I'm not in very good shape,” Kerner replied.

“No. That you're not,” Dr. Lehman said, replacing the chart. He walked over to Kerner and looked down at him. “So what happened, Mr. Kerner?”

“Nothing.”

Kerner averted his head.

The doctor turned and headed for the door. “I'll see you around, Mr. Kerner.”

“Wait. . . . Wait a minute.”

Dr. Lehman stopped at the door. “Yes?”

“I'll tell you what happened.”

The doctor came back to the bed. He pulled up a chair and sat down near Kerner.

“I was beaten up,” Kerner said.

“Beaten up, eh? That's what I figured. . . . The various bone fractures listed on your chart seem to suggest that. Anyways, they did some job on you.”

Kerner glared at the doctor.

Dr. Lehman pulled his chair closer to the bed. “Who did it?”

“A couple of goons.”

“I guess this had to do with your problem with this Mr. Hankleman, hmm?”

“Well . . . yes . . . sort of.”

“What do you mean, sort of?”

“Well. . . . Okay, I'll tell you exactly what happened. . . . Do you remember the last session I had with you?”

“Very vaguely. That was quite a while ago.”

“I told you about the plan that Mr. Weisskopf and his partner had set up to shaft Hankleman. . . . Do you remember that?”

“Oh, yes. Yes. You had done a whole scenario in their office for the benefit of Hankleman who'd had the office bugged.”

“That's right. And he had fallen for it, if you remember.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“A meeting had been arranged up north and Hankleman was going there supposedly to get the plan of a tract of land slated to be expropriated by the government for the new autoroute extension.”

“Yes, I recall that. And if my memory serves me right, you were going to deliver the plan to Weisskopf's man who was posing as the director of the Autoroute Authority.”

“The Roads Planning Department,” Kerner corrected.

Dr. Lehman nodded.

“That evening, after I left your office, I went for supper at Weisskopf's house and picked up the plan which was in an architect's cylinder. Then I went home.”

With some effort, Kerner turned his head and looked directly at Dr. Lehman. A strange smile came over his face.

“Go on,” Dr. Lehman said. “You went home with the plan . . .”

Kerner continued to smile strangely.

“What happened then?” the psychiatrist asked.

Kerner began chuckling. “Then I freaked out,” he said.

“You what?”

“I freaked out.”

“Yes?”

“Yes,” Kerner replied, still chuckling.

“Would you care to amplify on that statement?”

“Sure, why not? But I'll have to go back a bit in time and explain a few things first.”

“So go,” Dr. Lehman said without any expression.

“By the end of my last session with you, I think it would be fair to say that I had progressed quite well. Wouldn't you say?”

“Yes, that's true,” Dr. Lehman replied with a brief nod.

“I had gone . . . what? . . . two days without buying?”

“That's right, two days.”

“And if you remember, I had decided to sell everything I owned and move to a kibbutz in Israel.”

The doctor nodded.

“I owned a lot of valuable stuff, right?”

“Right.”

“I was going to sell it all, right?”

“What is this, a quiz?” Dr. Lehman asked, scowling.

Kerner laughed almost gleefully and ignored the question. “But there was one other thing I owned, something I had bought during the height of my buying addiction.” Kerner paused.

Dr. Lehman said nothing.

“Aren't you going to ask me what it was?”

“No,” Dr. Lehman replied nonchalantly.

“Aren't you curious to know?” Kerner said, the strange smile coming back onto his face.

“No,” Dr. Lehman answered.

“Well, I'll tell you anyways,” Kerner said and then paused. There was a bright gleam in his eyes and he began to laugh softly as though savouring some secret thought. He averted his eyes from Dr. Lehman for a moment and stared straight ahead. His laughter stopped and he turned quickly back to look directly at the doctor. “I also owned a piece of land,” he said, throwing the words out almost as though in a challenge.

“Yes, I know that,” Dr. Lehman said offhandedly. “You had mentioned that in your second session with me.”

For a moment there was a puzzled look on Kerner's face, as though he were trying to think of something. “Yes, I guess I did mention it to you, but I'm surprised you remembered.”

“I remember everything, Mr. Kerner. I have total recall. I can remember every word you ever said to me and I can tell you at what time and on what day you said it. I can also tell you exactly what you were wearing when you said it. So don't be surprised.”

“I'm very impressed,” Kerner said sarcastically.

“As you should be,” Dr. Lehman replied calmly.

Kerner took a deep breath. “Do you want to hear this story or not?” he said, a note of anger in his voice.

“Enough questions, Mr. Kerner. You called me down here. So if you want to talk, talk; if you don't want to, then don't.”

Kerner grinned and nodded several times. “Okay, okay . . . so I had this land. It was a fair-sized piece which I'd originally bought for next to nothing. The really interesting thing about it though was . . .” Kerner was grinning broadly now. “. . . was that coincidentally it happened to be located in the same general area as Weisskopf and Mandelberg's land.”

Dr. Lehman's face showed no emotion.

Kerner became serious. “Anyway, I had decided to sell all these things, as you know. It was a hard decision. I mean, you know what I was going through. But to be honest, during the few days immediately after I had made that decision, things weren't as bad as I had thought they would be. . . . The first day that the significance of my decision really hit me was the day when I last saw you.”

“Yes, I remember you said very little at that last session,” Dr. Lehman commented.

“I was bugged that day,” Kerner said.

“Bugged?”

“That's right, bugged. . . . That morning I had a few meetings with various people who were interested in buying all of my art, sculptings, furniture, the whole works. The best offer I had was equal to about half of what it was all worth and it was obvious this would be the best price I could expect. That bugged me. It bugged me a lot. Then I began to think about my business. I knew it was a total write-off. I knew I could expect to get next to nothing for it. That bugged me too because it had been worth a lot. I had spent a lot of time building it up. I had put my guts into it. I had built up a tremendous amount of goodwill. I had fantastic contacts. That alone made that business worth a lot of money . . . a fortune. And it bothered me that because of my particular situation at that point in time, I'd end up getting next to nothing for it. That bugged me. It bugged me a lot. But I kept telling myself that I had made my decision to quit the whole rat race and I shouldn't let all these things bother me. But they did. I started feeling ill. By the time I got to your office that day, I was really sick. As a matter of fact, I almost didn't show up that day.”

“So why did you then?”

Kerner shrugged nonchalantly and smiled. “Who knows.”

“You didn't mention a word about how you felt that day,” Dr. Lehman said.

“I don't remember.”

“In fact, you spent the last half-hour of that session without saying a word.”

“Of course. How could I? You were too busy screaming at Mrs. Griff through your crazy microphone.”

“I only spoke to her for about twenty seconds, Kerner. Don't exaggerate. You had plenty of time to talk if you wanted to.”

Kerner grinned and nodded. “That's true. I just wasn't interested in saying anything at that last session. As I said, I was feeling sick and by the time I left your office I felt even sicker. By the time I got to Weisskopf's house that evening, I was afraid I was going to throw up on his dining-room table. That's how bad I felt. Anyways, I finally left there about eleven with the plan, which I was going to deliver to their man the next day. I just wanted to get home and get to sleep. The minute I got to my apartment, I took a few tranquilizers and flaked out on my bed. . . .” Kerner paused. “Do you mind lighting a cigarette for me?”

Dr. Lehman lit a cigarette and passed it to Kerner who took it between the two unbroken fingers of his left hand, the tips of which projected from the cast just enough to grasp the cigarette.

“I'll hold this,” Kerner said. He took a long drag and exhaled slowly through his mouth. “So I went to sleep. . . . Sometime during the night, I woke up. I was sweating and shaking as though I'd been having some kind of nightmare, but I couldn't recall anything. I sat there trying to remember what I had dreamt. I had a feeling it was important for me to remember. Why? I don't know. I just did. I thought and thought but everything was just one big blank. I started feeling sick again. I stood up and turned on the lights. I began walking through my apartment and looking at all my beautiful things, thinking that soon, in another day or so, they'd all be gone. The more I looked at them, the sicker I became, but in a way that was worse than ever before. Until that night, whenever I'd been ill it had been almost entirely a physical thing, but that night it was like a pain in my mind. It grew worse and worse. I thought I was going crazy. . . . There seemed absolutely no purpose to living. The whole world seemed absurd, useless.” A shadow passed across Kerner's face. He dragged on the cigarette.

Dr. Lehman sat motionless in his chair.

Kerner shifted his body slightly, grimacing with pain. “Then I went back into the bedroom. I had to lie down or pass out. I lay down on my bed. Something in my mind kept pushing at me to remember what I had dreamt. I had a feeling it was a key that could help me unlock some secret that could help me solve my predicament. I kept thinking about a plan. A plan. A plan. This idea kept passing through my mind. I sat up on my bed. Something told me I was close to finding the key. . . . And then I looked down towards the end of my bed. Lying there was the architect's cylinder containing the plan of Weisskopf and Mandelberg's land.” Kerner paused and began to laugh. He took another drag of his cigarette and then dropped it beside the bed. “Do you mind stepping on that,” he said.

Dr. Lehman put his foot over the cigarette and ground it into the tile floor.

“Do you remember the day you came down to La Galerie d'Or and I threw up on that sculptor?”

Dr. Lehman nodded slowly.

“Afterwards when we were back at your office you said I was on my way towards beating my sickness. You said something had obviously clicked inside me and I was going to be all right.”

Dr. Lehman remained silent and motionless.

“Well, at the time you said that, I didn't recall anything having clicked inside me, but on the night I'm telling you about now . . . on that night, something did click inside my head. I could actually hear it and feel it, as though a switch had been released somewhere inside there, inside my brain. It was as though my real personality had been hidden, locked away somewhere deep inside me . . . and when that switch went
click,
it was suddenly liberated . . . and everything about me fell into place. In one instant, I saw everything exactly the way it was. I knew I had been fooling myself with the idea that I would change my way of life, sell everything and live on a kibbutz. I realized it was insanity. I suddenly knew I could have everything I wanted and that was how I should live . . . getting everything there was to get. Everything. There was nothing to stop me. I knew for the first time in my life that I didn't owe anything to anyone. That morality doesn't exist. That we're just animals that can think. That we're not on this earth for long and that while we're here we should do everything we can to satisfy ourselves. I realized that it's only guilt that screws people up and that it's only the weak who feel guilty. I realized without the slightest doubt that there was no reason for anyone to have to feel guilty about anything . . . and I mean anything!