`And after I've helped you be released what then might I do?'
`Get me out of here. Until I'm free I can't think about anything else. On the outside, well…'
`What would you do on the outside?'
He turned on me sharply.
'Goddam it, man, I said get me out of here, not more talk. You said you wanted to help and you keep on rapping.'
I considered this. It was clear that nothing I would do for Jones inside the hospital would be anything but the act of a white doctor. Unless I broke through that stereotype my love would never touch him. Once released he might well consider me a stupid Charlie that he had fucked good, but that seemed an irrelevant consideration. Inside the hospital there could only be hate. Outside . . .
I stood up and walked over to the sooty window and looked out at a group of patients playing a listless game of
softball.
`I'll have you released right now. You can go home this afternoon, before supper. It will be slightly illegal and I may
get into trouble, but if freedom is all I can give you then that's what I'll give.'
`You puttin' me on?'
`You'll be back in the city within an hour if I have to drive you there myself.'
What's the catch? If I can go free today why couldn't I go free a month ago? I ain't changed none.'
He sneered at his own grammar.
`Yes, I know. But I have.'
I turned my back on him again and stared out across the lawn and past the softball game to watch a little boy trying to
fly a kite.
`I think this hospital is a prison and that the doctors are jailers,' I said, `and the city is hell and that our society acts to
kill the spirit of love which might exist between man and man. I'm lucky. I'm a jailer and not one of the jailed and thus I can help you. I will help you. But let me-ask one favor of you.' When I turned back to him he was leaning forward on the edge of the chair with concentrated animal tension. When I
paused, he frowned and whispered out a `How?'
That frown and whisper warned me that the two possible `favors' I had in mind would both fail: `Come and see me at
my office' and `be my friend: A man didn't befriend his jailer for giving him freedom since the freedom was deserved,
and the doctor-patient relation had failure built into it. I stood looking at him blankly.
'What do you want me to do?' he asked.
Outside I heard a boat's horn from the river groan twice, like warning snorts.
`Nothing, I said. `Nothing. I just remembered that I want to help you. Period. You don't have to do anything. You'll go
free. Outside, what you do is what you do. You'll be free of this hospital and free of me.'
He stared suspiciously and I stared back, feeling serious and ham actor noble. The urge to suggest verbally that I was
being great for doing this was strong, but humble Jesus won out.
`Come on,' I said. `Lets go and get your clothes end get out of here.'
As it turned out, it took more than an hour to get Arturo Toscanini Jones released and even then, as I had feared, it was
illegal. I got him released from the ward in my custody, but such a release did not give him permission to leave the hospital: That took formal action of one of the directors and was impossible for that afternoon. I'd talk to Dr. Mann at lunch on Friday, or maybe phone.
I drove Jones to Manhattan and then uptown to his mother's home at 142nd Street. Neither of us said a single word during the entire drive and when I let him out he said only: `Thanks for the ride.'
'That's okay,' I answered.
After a barely perceptible pause he slammed the door and strode away.
Strike up another scoreless innings for Jesus.
I was exhausted by the time I had gotten Arturo released from the hospital and my silence with him in the car was
partly fatigue. Trying minute after minute to be someone not totally natural to the personality, as Jesus was for me, was hard work. Impossible work, as a matter of fact. During that whole day I noticed that after about forty minutes of being a loving Jesus my system-would simply break down into apathy and in difference. If I continued the role past the forty-minute point it was purely mechanical rather than felt.
As I drove toward my rendezvous with Arlene my bleary mind tried to scrutinize my relations with her. Christianity frowns on adultery: this much I was able to come up with. Our relationship was a sin. Should Jesus simply avoid a rendezvous with his mistress? No. He would want to express his love for her. His agape. He would want to remind her of various relevant commandments.
Such was the intention of Jesus when he met Mrs. Jacob Ecstein that afternoon at the corner of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in Harlem and drove to an obscure section of the parking lot at La Guardia Airport overlooking the bay. The woman was cheerful and relaxed and spoke during most of the drive about Portnoy's Complaint, a book which Jesus had not read. It was clear from her speaking, however, that the author of the novel had not discovered love, and that the effect upon Mrs. Ecstein was to increase her cynical, guiltless, shameless devil-may-care immersion in her gin. It seemed to Jesus precisely the wrong mood for his beginning to discuss Judao-Christian love.
'Arlene,' spoke Jesus, after he had parked, `do you ever feel great warmth and love toward people?'
`Only for you, lover,' she replied.
`Have you never felt a great rush of warmth and love toward some person or toward all humanity?'
The woman cocked her head and thought.
`Occasionally.'
`To what do you attribute it?'
`Alcohol.'
The woman unzipped the fly of Jesus and reached a hand in and enclosed the Sacred Tool. It was, all accounts agree,
filled only with agape.