“You have often wished it?”

“I used to wish it for years. When I was a kid.”

Another time, Dr. Allwin gets him to speak of those childhood years when he so often wished he had never been born. Judd explains that it was when the family lived on Michigan Avenue and he had to go to that school where there were only girls.

“You might have been proud of being the only boy among so many girls.”

He hated girls, hated females. They were all so stupid, gossipy.

Has he never had a steady girl, a real girl?

A few times he has been attracted, but not in love. And now, just lately, he had met a girl, a girl who made him feel different – he had even thought of running away with her, marrying her. His voice drops.

How did she make him feel different? Sexually?

No, he had not had sexual intercourse with her, though she stimulated him. But she was a nice girl and she made him feel he could understand things like marrying and having a family… Judd falls silent.

“Do you want to tell me more about this girl?”

“I don’t see any point to it.”

He tells, all at once, of an incident with Max, when he was a little kid: When they were playfully wrestling on the lawn, he hit his forehead on a stone and bled and cried, and Max called him a sissy. That was when he determined in his heart never to show Max, never to show anyone, if he felt hurt – in fact, never to let any feelings hurt him. “I discovered that emotions could hurt too much, and so I decided not to let myself be hurt that way.”

Another day, he finds himself talking of the few months he spent at the public school. The kids kept teasing him because he was such a shrimp, and a Jewboy.

“How did you feel about it?”

“That is hard to analyse at this point. Angry, I should think.”

“And perhaps ashamed?”

“No – no, I would not be ashamed of being a Jew. My people were always proud of it,” he adds automatically.

Then Judd tells of the strange day when Trudy wasn’t there and he started home alone, and two rough kids kept after him: “Hey, sheenie! Where’s your nursemaid?” Then they had hold of him, pulling him into an alley. Hey, that fat nursemaid, did he ever look under her skirt? “Yah, yah, you’re her slave, she makes you do it to her.” And then, “Hey, he got a pecker? Hey! the sheenies they cut off a piece of the petzel, maybe they cut off too much! Hey, maybe he’s a girl!” And tearing at his knickerbockers, holding him while he yelled, struck blindly. He feels their blows on his body, his face… kicks, blood… and he is running.

“This nursemaid, Trudy, she was with you for some years?”

“Until I was fourteen.”

What was she like?

She didn’t have a very highly developed intelligence, Judd explains. In fact, he would say she was a moron – she had gone only to a few grades in school in the old country. He spoke German with her. But she was cunning, and she was devoted to him. Once he wanted some stamps from a cousin’s collection and she just laughed as he went and swiped them. But after that she blackmailed him, by threatening to tell on him, making him do things she wanted.

What things?

Oh, just obey her. And not tell… about other things. Even, he sort of remembers, sex things – maybe when she gave him his bath, how she loved her little boy, kisses all over him. Trudy’s mouth, laughing and threatening, “If you’re not a good little boy…” and laughing, as if to devour, and then he would be her little girl.

How is Judd’s sleep? Dr. Allwin asks him. Does he fall asleep easily, or does he have some favourite fantasies, perhaps, before going to sleep? Judd becomes interested – this is a whole world of inquiry that he would not have thought of – and he talks quite freely, objectively. Yes, almost as far back as he can remember – “I used to make up these stories, before falling asleep. I was a king, sometimes, or else a slave-”

“Which were you more often, the king or the slave?”

“As it went on, I was almost always the slave.”

“It went on for a long time? Till the present?”

“Well, fairly recently.” Sometimes, he tells, it would last for an hour. He would lie on his stomach or on his side, usually hugging the pillow. After a while it would become very pleasant, with a pleasant warm bed odour, and he would imagine this was like the body odour of a naked slave who had been exerting himself, perhaps in battle, wielding a big sword and saving the life of the king. “Then the king would be grateful and offer to give the slave his liberty, but I would refuse, because I was devoted to the king.

“Another time I would be on a ship, and the vessel would be captured by pirates, and we would all be sold as slaves, and in the market place the Grand Vizier would notice me on the slave stand, and he would observe that I was more intelligent than all the rest, so he would buy me to become tutor for the young king, and then I would be branded.”

He breathes more deeply. “I would be branded on the inside calf of the right leg, a beautiful round mark of a crown-”

Another time he describes the king as his camp counsellor, when he was twelve. “His name was Chesty. He was about eighteen, and I admired him very much.

“Then I would picture myself as his slave. Sometimes it would be that the king got the slave as a stray baby found in the woods in a basket, or else the king was riding past the slave market and there was a boy of ten or twelve being sold, and the king took pity and bought him and took him for his personal slave. The king would have the boy slave come and sit with him, and he would pet him.”

“This was always your counsellor, Chesty?”

“After that summer it was other fellows, sometimes a teacher, and then a few years later we went up that summer to Artie’s in Charlevoix, and I began to idealize him, and from then on it was almost always Artie who was the king.”

“You idealized him?”

“I would see him as an athlete, a champion, even though I knew he is not a champion. And also. I would idealize him as a brilliant student, getting all A’s-”

“You knew his actual grades?”

“I knew Artie never got all A’s, but I told myself he could, if he wasn’t lazy. He has an almost perfect mind, and in other ways – sociability, and the ability to make people do what he wants – I would rate him very high. In fact, I once made a chart, and I rated everyone I knew, and Artie came out highest, ninety I think.”

“I see. You were aware, through all this, that you idealized Artie?”

Judd looks directly into his eyes. “It was blind hero worship. I almost completely identified myself with him. I would watch the food he ate, the drink going down his throat, and I would be envious.”

“And now?”

“Yes, even now. For a few days, I was angry with him. But now, when they take us through the corridors together sometimes, and to feel him near me, to brush against him, makes me feel I am alive.” He continues to look into Dr. Allwin’s eyes, not defiantly, not apologetically; Judd is entirely self-possessed, but there is between them, as a few days ago, a sense of shared pleasure in a task that is going well, even though its purpose remains obscure.

Another time, Judd recalls a reversed version of the fantasy, in which he was the king, and Artie was the slave. “We were on a sea voyage and we were shipwrecked, and came to an uncharted island. A piano was all we saved from the wreck, and I was the only one who knew how to play. There were natives on the island, and I was the only one who could speak their language.

“The natives of the island were divided into two groups, nobles and slaves. All of my companions were made slaves, but because of my ability to play the piano I was made a noble, for the natives knew nothing of music and were enchanted. Then, as a noble, I bought Artie to be my slave. He was very ill, and I nursed him back to health. Then when he was well, I gave him the choice of three alternatives: