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He Knew It Was Time

He knew it was time to get help when he realised that he was even envious of her bicycle-seat. So he went to a Proustian psychotherapist in Hove, who injected him with a series of new memories which soon invalidated his obsession. In other words, he fell out of love with the cyclist and into love with the therapist. He brought her bunches of diplomas and sprays of letters to put after her name. He couched her in terms of endearment, bedded her in roses of bliss, bathed her in tears of paradise-

"That's enough," she said.

"I thought you were enjoying it."

"I was. But look at the time."

The fifty minutes were up. The bastards. Each one of those minutes had promised to last forever. And if her minutes were all liars what did that tell you about her? She became an immortal enemy.

He took out his cheque-book and waved it angrily. "This is all I mean to you, isn't it?"

"Don't be silly. You've got it all wrong. Our time together will last forever, but our time apart has also got to start now. I've got someone else waiting and their need is greater than yours."

"I don't think so," he said, stomping off.

He'd show her. He'd measure his need against the other man's and then they'd see whose was the greater. But there were only two women in the waiting-room, maybe mother and daughter, staring rigidly into the magazines on their laps. "Excuse me," he said. "Which one of you is the patient?"

The mother looked up. There was so much wretched darkness in her eyes that he physically jumped back, as if from a sudden chasm.

"I'm sorry," he said, sitting down opposite them. "I didn't mean to be rude. It's just that she takes me up and then she casts me down. The higher she takes me the more the landing hurts, so I end up feeling worse than when I arrived. Don't you see? It's not working. The whole idea is a joke…"

The therapist was standing in the doorway.

"Thanks for the critique."

"Oh, it's not your fault. Why should your system be any less flawed than the others?"

"Because I'm sincere."

"But your sincerity doesn't make it true."

"Of course it does. I love you and I always have and always will. And I love Mrs. Edelman likewise."

"And all your other patients?"

"Unreservedly. That's the whole point."

"So we're keeping you sweet all the time while you're only keeping us sweet for fifty minutes a week or whatever."

She shrugged and laughed:

"I can't help it if I'm lucky."

"But if you love us all unreservedly then you must love us indiscriminately. What's the difference between indiscriminate love and no love at all?"

She looked down, as if flummoxed. He turned to the mother:

"Don't you see? All our love is focused on her, but what do we get in return? A hurried little smear with some kind of bland ointment which wears off as soon as we leave."

"You're wrong. I was like you when I first came. I wanted to have her all to myself… You'll just have to be patient. The misery you feel when you're not with her is always outweighed by the ecstasy you feel when you are."

The daughter stood up, looked at her watch.

"I'll be back in an hour," she said. The therapist put her arm around Mrs. Edelman, who softly moaned as she laid her head in the sweet cradle between neck and shoulder. Together they floated through to the consulting-room.

A minute or so later, the therapist returned:

"I'm sorry, but I've got to get on. Just remember this: I love you far into the past, way beyond your conception. And I love you far into the future, way beyond your death. I'll never be irritated by the baby inside you, nor disgusted by the old man. Who else will love you, who else will even know you, in all your phases? Already you've transferred your possessiveness and jealousy from its original object to me. Now the cure can begin. It may take a long time. It may never be complete. But at least it's happening, and right here is the only place it can happen."

Through the tears welling into his eyes he could see she was a prism. The light she refracted was superterranean. And not only a prism but a wheel, a well, a river, a rock, a church, a constant midwife at an everlasting birth.

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