The Manticore

She was all smiles.

"No dogfight this time, I hope, Mr. Staunton?"

"I hope not. But it is entirely up to you."

"Entirely? Very well. Before we go further, the report has come from the clinic. You seem to be in depleted general health and a little – nervous, shall we say? What used to be called neurasthenic. And some neuritic pain. Rather underweight. Occasional marked tremor of the hands."

"Recently, yes. I have been under great stress."

"Never before?"

"Now and then, when my professional work was heavy."

"How much have you had to drink this morning?"

"A good sharp snort for breakfast, and another before coming here."

"Is that usual?"

"It is what I usually take on a day when I am to appear in court."

"Do you regard this as appearing in court?"

"Certainly not. But as I have already told you several times, I have been under heavy stress, and that is my way of coping with stress. Doubtless you think it a bad way. I think otherwise."

"I am sure you know all the objections to excessive use of alcohol?"

"I could give you an excellent temperance lecture right now. Indeed, I am a firm believer in temperance for the kind of people who benefit from temperance. I am not one of them. Temperance is a middle-class virtue, and it is not my fate. On the contrary, I am rich and in our time wealth takes a man out of the middle class, unless he made all the money himself. I am the third generation of money in my family. To be rich is to be a special kind of person. Are you rich?"

"By no means."

"Quick to deny it, I observe. Yet you seem to live in a good professional style, which would be riches to most people in the world. Well – I am rich, though not so rich as people imagine. If you are rich you have to discover your own truths and make a great many of your own rules. The middle-class ethic will not serve you, and if you devote yourself to it, it will trip you up and make a fool of you."

"What do you mean by rich?"

"I mean good hard coin. Doctor. I don't mean the riches of the mind or the wealth of the spirit, or any of that pompous crap. I mean money. Specifically, I count a man rich if he has an annual income of over a hundred thousand dollars before taxes. If he has that he has plenty of other evidences of wealth, as well. I have considerably more than a hundred thousand a year, and I make much of it by being at the top of my profession, which is the law. I am what used to be called 'an eminent advocate.' And if being rich and being an eminent advocate also requires a drink before breakfast, I am prepared to pay the price. But to assure you that I am not wholly unmindful of my grandparents, who hated liquor as the prime work of the Devil, I always have my first Drink of the day with a raw egg in it. That is my breakfast."

"How much in a day?"

"Call it a bottle, more or less. More at present, because as I keep telling you, I have been under stress."

"What made you think you needed an analyst, instead of a cure for alcoholics?"

"Because I do not think of myself as an alcoholic. To be an alcoholic is a middle-class predicament. My reputation in the country where I live is such that I would cut an absurd figure in Alcoholics Anonymous; if a couple of the brethren came to minister to me, they would be afraid of me; anyhow I don't go on the rampage or pass out or make a notable jackass of myself – I just drink a good deal and talk rather frankly. If I were to go out with another A.A. to cope with some fellow who was on the bottle, the sight of me would terrify him; he would think he had done something dreadful in his cups, and that I was his lawyer and the police were coming with the wagon. Nor would I be any good in group therapy; I took a look at that, once; I am not an intellectual snob, Doctor – at least, that is my story at present – but group therapy is too chummy for me. I lack the confessional spirit; I prefer to encourage it in others, preferably when they are in the witness-box. No, I am not an alcoholic, for alcoholism is not my disease, but my symptom."

"Then what do you call your disease?"

"If I knew, I would tell you. Instead, I hope you can tell me."

"Such a definition might not help us much at present. Let us call it stress following your father's death. Shall we begin talking about that?"

"Don't we start with childhood? Don't you want to hear about my toilet-training?"

"I want to hear about your trouble now. Suppose we begin with the moment you heard of your father's death."