Lazaar has told the doctors that he does not mean to kill himself, that he never meant to kill himself. They will give him psychiatric tests.
Lazaar has convinced the doctors he is sane. His tests show no self-destructive tendencies.
The doctors tell me they will have to let him go tomorrow, that they can’t hold him on my charges. What do I do?
As soon as they release him today Lazaar will kill himself. They won’t let me near him. I have been told that if I try to meet him at the hospital I will be arrested. He has to be watched — someone must be there to overpower him. There is no way of saving another man’s life if he really means to kill himself. Life can be spilled in a minute. With a lousy kitchen knife. With a jump from a building. Or in front of a car. Or a subway. Or by running, head down, across a room and into a wall.
Is Lazaar dead? The genius? The maker of systems? Is Lazaar dead? Has he killed himself? And me not there to see it?
Lazaar does not answer his telephone.
When the phone rang this morning I leaped toward it from my bed. (I am like that. Even in normal circumstances. A ringing telephone, a knock on the door, makes me… not nervous — what bad news can there be? a bachelor, an orphan, disaffiliated — so much as compulsively responsive, insanely anxious to please. Here is something I can do, some way I can be of service. It doesn’t even occur to me that the call will change my life. What can change anybody’s life? We’re not sweepstakes winners, we’re men. I cannot bring myself to disappoint strangers. I have this meaningless humility in small things.) I was hoping, of course, that the call was from Lazaar. I wanted to hear him say, “Boswell, I am alive and I am reconciled to life.”
I dropped the phone onto the floor. At once I knew it could not be Lazaar. On the rug, by my bare foot, there was the sound of a girl singing love songs in the morning.
“Yes.”
Music.
“Please, who is this?”
“Jimmy, did you see the Times yet?”
“Nate?”
“Who, then?”
“Nate, what is it?”
“Did you see the Times?”
“No.”
“Well, there’s a little item about your pal. The genius. Some genius.”
“Lazaar?”
“Jimmy, the company you keep!”
“Lazaar?”
“Yeah. Him.”
“Nate, what is it?”
“Wait a minute. I’ll read you.” He left the phone and I could hear the girl again on Nate’s combination hi-fi, stereo, TV, tape recorder, AM-FM, Short Wave, Long Wave, Living Theater, Puppet Show.
“Jimmy? Wait a minute. Simmons, turn that thing down. I’m reading from the Times to my friend. Jimmy?”
“Come on, Nate.”
“All right, don’t rush me. If you took a classy paper like the Times you wouldn’t have to depend so much on your friends. I’m beginning to read, Jimmy. ‘Dr. Herman Lazaar, Lyman Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College, was released Tuesday from Bellevue Hospital. In the hospital for extensive psychiatric tests and observation, he had been taken to Bellevue by an unidentified companion who alleged that the Brooklyn College professor had repeatedly made attempts on his own life. Hospital officials, satisfied that Dr. Lazaar is not suicidal, have discharged him.
“‘Dr. Lazaar’s work in philosophy, while comparatively unknown to the general public, is highly esteemed in professional philosophic circles. He is the founder of “Yeaism” and “Nayism,” two systems of philosophic logic which, starting from identical premises, lead to exactly opposite conclusions.’ How do you like that? The guy tried to kill himself. Go get a college education… Jimmy?”
“I’m here.”
“You didn’t forget the blast over at the place tomorrow night, did you?”
“No, of course not, Nate.”
“Many famous chicks. Movie stars, the works. Bring your autograph book.”
“Sure, Nate.”
“How do you like that? An ‘unidentified companion.’ The creep’s probably queer. Watch yourself, Jimmy.”
“My eyes are open, Nate.”
“Look, come over a little early. We’re playing Frank’s new record. A premiere.”
“Thanks, Nate.”
Nate said ring-a-ding-ding and I said ring-a-ding- ding yourself and we hung up.
I do not miss the significance of Nate’s call. He was warning me, telling me to choose sides. He knew Lazaar was going to try to kill himself because I told him about the threats. I ran to him with them. What the hell is the matter with me? I sit with Nate and gossip about Lazaar; I sit with Lazaar and gossip about Nate. I make offerings to each of them.
Nate doesn’t approve of my having friends like Lazaar. He says, “If they can’t hit high C, if they don’t do imitations, if they ain’t actors, if they don’t have prime time on a Sunday night, if they ain’t SRO at the box office, if they ain’t show biz, Jimmy, they’re bums.”
I tell him there are many great men who aren’t in the business. “So let them cure cancer,” Nate says. “They got to make it with the public.”
When I tell Nate that I cannot come to some party of his or meet some celebrity, he is hurt. He thinks I’ve changed. Sometimes I see him look at me with a kind of awe. It is the way one looks at an old pal who has just announced he will take holy orders. This is touching, but Nate, who is made for awe, is nervous if it’s a certain kind. Still, he will never turn on me. His is a world, finally, of permanent loyalties. A commitment once made among men who do not yield their trust easily is a commitment for life. There is something sappy in this and sentimental and incredibly noble. Nate should smoke cigars, heel wards, play poker with appointees on the take. He has the soul of the tinhorn; he confuses graft with friendship, conspiracy with love. Perhaps this is why he is so fond of me. I am on the take. I take Nate’s meals, his introductions. I give him nothing at all in return, and this pleases him. Perhaps my gossip is an attempt at independence, an effort to even the score. I notice that Nate takes no pleasure in hearing it. He thinks I’ve changed, and he fears change. That is why he bothers to warn me; he is defending himself.
But I know what Nate cannot know. I have not changed.
Boswell is Boswell is Boswell. His truth is that the personality is simply another name for habit and that what we view as a fresh decision is only a rededication, a new way to get old things; that the evolving self is an illusion, fate just some final consequence. I have never surprised myself, come upon myself unaware. Always I know it’s me.
I do not want to have to pick between Nate and Lazaar — not because I would have to betray one or the other (I talk as though Lazaar were still alive), but because I need both. I am like some small businessman enough ahead of the game to open another store. If I have a new type of man in my collection it is not because I have changed, but because the old techniques have worked.
Lazaar is an instance. It cost me almost thirty dollars in long-distance calls just to get Lazaar’s name. I put in person-to-person calls to the chairman of eight Departments of Philosophy. (I will stint on lunches, wear old clothes, live in cheap, cheerless rooms, but a campaign is a campaign.) Before they came to the phone I had honed the precise edge of brassiness I wanted.