So did the fat man, although he still smiled, and I felt very dose to him. I thought again of the spectacular, nonsensical options that I'd been considering and decided I'd throw them out. The fat man began laughing again. I looked up startled, smiled socially at him and decided that I would instead use all three non-rational options. He laughed harder. With a flush I realized that I would have to abandon the dicelife completely, but the fat man laughed on and was joined by three, four other fat men all pointing at me and laughing joyously.
My mind was filled suddenly with the vision of thousands of fat men sitting up there in that fourth dimension watching the antics of human aspiration and purpose, and laughing - not a single one sober or compassionate or pitying. Our plan, hopes, expectations, and promises; and the realities of the future which they could also see: only a source of laughter. The men (they were both men and women actually, but all fat) often crowded together to look at one particular human whose life seemed to evoke special ironies or humor.
When I realized that neither abandoning the dicelife nor retaining it would end the eternal amusement of the fat people in the sky I felt like a man on some television show who is asked to guess what's behind the green wall. No matter what he guesses, the audience, which can see what is behind the wall while he can't, laughs. All my writhings in the present to find a future which will please me evoke only laughter in the audience in the sky. `The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft astray,' said Napoleon with a chuckle on his return from Moscow.
I was laughing again with my fat men, and the woman opposite me and my attendant with a finger to his lips were both hissing violent `shhhhshes.'
`Look!' I said with a huge smile, and pointed off toward the ceiling and the fourth dimension. `It's all there,' I went on between chuckles. `The answer - up there.'
The old woman glanced sternly up at the ceiling, adjusted her glasses twice and then looked back at me. She looked embarrassed and a little guilty.
`I . . . I don't see it, I'm afraid,' she said.
I laughed. I looked up at my fat man and he laughed at my laughing. I laughed at him.
`That's all right,' I said to the old lady. `Don't worry about it. You'll be all right.'
The two men from the next table were firing: `shhhs,' and my attendant was standing nervously beside me, but I raised
my hand to silence them. Smiling warmly I said `The great thing about the answer…' and I began again, big belly
bubbling and joyous, `The great thing is that it doesn't do us any good at all.'
Laughing, I thumbed my nose at the laughing men in the sky - who laughed - and began walking through the library,
trailed by my attendant and leaving behind me like a big boat a wake of `shhhhhs' as I passed.
`It's all right,' I said loudly to everyone. `Knowing the answer doesn't matter. You don't have to know.'
Interestingly enough, no one approached me as I walked on through the central reading room of the New York Public
Library, my belly booming out its Answer to the stack upon stack of answers and the row upon row of seekers. Only at
the exit did I find someone who responded to me. An ancient portly library guard with flushed face and huge Santa
Claus pot came up to me as I was about to leave and, smiling as if his face would burst, said in a louder voice than
mine `gotta tone dawn the laughing during hours,' and then we both roared out into new laughter louder than ever until
I turned and left.
Chapter Forty-seven
The Die is my shepherd;
I shall not want;
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, I lie;
He leadeth me beside the still waters, I swim.
He destroyeth my soul
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness
For randomness sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Chance is with me;
Thy two sacred cubes they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me In the presence of mine enemies
Thou anointest my head with oil;
My cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy and evil and cruelty shall follow ma
All the days of my life
And I will dwell in the house of Chance for ever.
from The Book of the Die
Chapter Forty-eight
The meeting of the executive committee of the Psychoanalysts' Association of New York took place early on the
afternoon of 30 June, 1969, in a large seminar room at Dr. Weinburger's Institute for the Study of Hypochondria in the
Dying. Dr. Weinburger, a bushy-haired, thickset man in his late forties, sat impatiently behind a long table with
Doctors Peerman and Cobblestone on one side of him and old Dr. Moon and Dr. Mann on the other. All the gentlemen
looked serious and intent except for Dr. Moon, who was sleeping quietly between Chairman Weinburger and Dr.
Mann, occasionally sliding slowly sideways to rest against the shoulder of the one, and then, like a pendulum that
badly needs oiling, after a hesitation, sliding slowly back across the arc to rest against the shoulder of the other.
The table at which the five sat was so long that they looked more like fugitives huddled together for mutual protection
rather than judges. Dr. Rhinehart and Dr. Ecstein, who was present as friend and personal physician, sat on stiff
wooden chairs in the middle of the room opposite them. Dr. Ecstein was slumped and squinting, but Dr. Rhinehart was