He pointed to the large, elaborate diploma hanging on the wall. It was marked COPY, and Dr. Agnelli sensed my question coming.
“Remember, Berto, everything is destroyed by war.”
He whispered hoarsely, as he stared at the wall.
“Yes…my mama, my papa, my brothers…and me!
“No, Berto, I did not look like this back then. Once I was tall and straight, and my face was admired and stroked by all the ladies. I was quite the swain once upon a time. “And then they came. It was 1939. They walled us up, thousands of us, in a section of Krakow meant to hold only hundreds. They did not want to defile their precious Aryan eyes with the sight of Jews.
“We were demoralized. We tried to maintain our dignity, what little autonomy we had in our kennel existence. But our conquerors, the racial purifiers, who perverted everything they touched, could not allow that. Their efforts were deliberate and concerted. We were to be broken, turned into the animals they said we were.”
I shuddered, and the two men saw it.
I was a boy on the verge of manhood. I had seen violence and death in my tenement neighborhood, but my young mind could not fathom the depths of depravity that this man, Lyman Lipschutz, had endured. It was all I could do not to shout to Dr. Agnelli, “Did this really happen?”
Dr. Lipschutz understood my thoughts. He removed his shirt.
“See, boy. They broke my arms, my legs, my back. My jaw met the butt end of a rifle many times.
“My friends—those who took gas ‘showers’—they were the lucky ones.”
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t stand the sight. There was no normal skin.
I kept my eyes closed, as Dr. Lipschutz described how some in the Krakow Ghetto had tried to maintain the human spirit; how his friend Mordecai Gebertig, a carpenter by trade, a balladeer by talent, had been punished by the Nazis for keeping hope alive with his songs: The monsters had silenced his music with a bullet.
Dr. Agnelli jumped down from his counter seat and went to his friend. I heard his whispered words.
“Lyman, you don’t have to do this. The boy has heard enough.”
“No! No, he must hear, he must learn! This will happen again. The beast within us all can resurface, no matter how civilized we think we are.”
As Dr. Agnelli knew he would, the dentist began to sob once more, so he held him again … and cried with him.
I am an old man now. I have seen life and death, in myriad ways, many times. To this day my psyche cannot comprehend the enormity of Lipschutz’s words.
But, Lyman, I do not forget.
The Junk Man
Nothing is ever as it seems.
“Dr. Galen, you have three more patients to see.”
I was doing a month’s rotation in the medical clinics my senior year. The school provided the clinics to the indigent poor and those barely managing to scrape by on what little they earned. Even the medications were free. All a patient had to do was deal with someone like me—not yet a doctor and desperately trying to learn by practicing on a real person.
The standing joke back then: What do a mortician, a pathologist, and a student seeing patients at the clinic have in common?
Answer: None of their clients could complain about the service.
On that particular day I had finished the first two patients quickly—nothing major, just nice, simple sore throats and runny noses—and then walked into the third examining room. It was barely the size of a broom closet, but it held two chairs and an exam table that probably had seen service in the Spanish-American War.
I looked at the entry data sheet the nurse had handed me and put on my best “concerned look.” They taught us how to look concerned, but I’m not sure it made any difference.
“Hello, Mr. Allman, I’m Dr. Galen. What seems to be the problem?”
He was a middle-aged man, his hands slightly shaky, and his sallow complexion rimmed with sun-pink face. As I got nearer, I could smell the mixed perfume of stale body sweat and even staler beer.
He looked me over, all shiny and scrubbed, wearing my student whites, and sighed. To him I might as well have been a kid dressed as a doctor for Halloween. He knew he wouldn’t be seeing a “real doctor.”
I steeled myself. I wasn’t that far from graduation. Soon I could legitimately call myself “Dr. Galen,” even though I still knew next to nothing about the human condition.
I went for the honesty gambit.
“Yes, sir, I know. I’m a medical student, but I can call in one of our staff doctors to see you, after I do some initial evaluation.”
That only partly reversed his disappointment, so I tried again.
“What kind of work do you do?”
“I’m a garbage man, Doc,” and his face actually broke a smile.
I sat down beside him.
“That’s hard work. What brings you here?”
The worry in his eyes was palpable. I already had jumped to the conclusion that he was an alcoholic. After all, he was shaky and giving off a pretty strong aroma. I sensed that he wanted to talk.
“I’m getter weaker, Doc. Look at me.”
I did. I guessed he was about five-feet ten, but under a-hundred-and-forty pounds, which turned out to be correct when I measured and weighed him.
“Doc, I used to weigh about a-hundred-and-eighty pounds. I could lift cans and containers that weighed as much as I did, and it didn’t bother me. Then, about two months ago, I started to get real hot all of a sudden. I couldn’t control my peeing. I started to get the shakes.”
He looked down at the floor, his face in full blush with embarrassment.
“I was no good with my wife … if you know what I mean.”
He stopped talking.
“Is that when you started drinking?”
He seemed relieved.
“Yeah, the booze helped the shakes and my headaches at first, then…”
Headaches? What the hell was I dealing with? My mind raced, as I threw out another question.
“Anyone else in your family have any problems like this?”
“Yeah, my dad died young. They said it was a stroke.”
“How old was he?”
“My age; forty-two.”
All you medically savvy folks, I know what you’re thinking: Get those big chemistry panels and some MRIs and total-body scans on this guy. That would’ve been great, but we had no such fancy devices or instant lab tests in the Jurassic period when I attended med school. I actually had to listen to my patient, examine him and—heaven forbid—put my hands on his body
I took his blood pressure—two hundred over one ten, with a resting pulse rate above a hundred beats per minute! His heart was racing and his skin was clammy. His neck felt lumpy. I started to suspect exophthalmos, from too much of the thyroid-related hormones, but his eyes weren’t bulging—yep, a fancy word meaning popeyed.
While he lay on that antique examining table, stripped to his shorts, I moved my fingers over his belly, checking for masses and enlarged blood vessels or organs. Nothing stood out.
Damn, this can’t be just simple overactive thyroid and diabetes!
Then one of those rare epiphanies of mind and intellect hit me. The letters MEN popped into my head: multiple endocrine neoplasia. It’s a typical mouthful of words we docs like to invent.
Roughly translated it means sometimes the human body decides to run amok, not just in one gland but in several. No question this guy had an overactive thyroid, probably due to a type of tumor, but his shakes and headaches, sweating and weight loss were being caused by small glands that sit on top of the kidneys called the adrenals. Get a tumor there and all hell breaks loose.
Small as they are, the adrenal glands produce the hormones that control our wellbeing: cortisol and adrenalin. A tumor of the adrenalin-producing cells, called a pheochromocytoma, can kill a person with massive spikes of circulating adrenalin. The blood pressure and pulse go through the ceiling, you get headaches, and then you stroke out.
; “Go ahead and get dressed, Mr. Allman. I want to call one of the staff doctors in to confirm what I think is going on. I have a feeling you’re going to be admitted for testing.”
“Doc, I don’t have any money.”
“Yeah, I know that. You still need to come in. I’ll call the social worker after the attending sees you.”
I spoke with the senior clinic doctor out in the hallway. He shook his head in disbelief.
“Pheos are pretty rare, Galen.”
As we entered the examining room he patted me on the shoulder.
“Listen, kid, when you hear hoof beats, it’s most likely a horse and not a zebra.”
After he had finished checking out Allman, he turned at me and muttered, “I’ll be damned!”
I won’t tell you about the primitive tests our poor patient had to endure to confirm my suspicions. I don’t want to make you nauseous. Suffice it to say I was right.
I was elated as I returned to my apartment that evening. Every good medical student dreams of making that rare diagnosis, finding the zebra instead of the horse, when those hoof beats thunder in your ears.
I was exhausted but happy. I lay down—just for a minute, you understand—and as I drifted off to sleep in my street clothes, I thought of Giuseppe.
I was fifteen, a sophomore at Concepción High School. I had managed to finish the hefty pile of homework the good nuns and lay teachers assigned us for fun on a beautiful spring weekend.
I kissed Mama, as I headed down the stairs of our tenement building.
Where was I going? Out!
It was midday Saturday and Sal—my friend Salvatore—waited for me. He and my other friends, Angie and Tomas, had gone on to the local public high school, after we graduated from St. Mary’s grammar school. I was lucky enough to get a scholarship to the Catholic high school in a nearby town.
Angie and Tomas were no longer in high school. Their new and permanent home was the little cemetery at the edge of our neighborhood. Sal and I carried on without them.
“Hey, Dottore Berto, kill anyone today?”
Sal was bigger and a helluva lot stronger than I was, but he was the friendliest, puppy-dog person you ever met. Behind that broad, dopey smile was a mind far sharper than mine.
He just didn’t realize it.
“Hey, Sal, where ya wanna go?”
After five days of speaking properly at school, I easily reverted to our neighborhood patois.
“Where else? Giuseppe’s!”
Giuseppe Monteverdi. We called him the Clip-Clop Man.
He also went by the name of Joe, and he was the neighborhood junk man. Monday through Saturday, the scarecrow-tall Joe would hook up his old, dappled mare to the wooden wagon with the name JOE’S JUNK painted on the sides. Up and down our neighborhood, and then outward to more affluent territories, he would scour the place for scrap metal, bits of wood, and other castaways of daily living.
Funny. Back in those days, recycling was natural, because people were so poor that anything of value was used and reused. In our community, nothing ever got thrown out—except drunken husbands, unfaithful wives, or reprobate kids.
For me, outside of the pigeons, packs of roaming dogs, and one special old alley cat, that dappled mare was as close to nature as we ever got.
Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop.
Anytime we heard that sound we ran to it, laughing and pushing each other, trading jokes in puberty-cracked voices about the girls we knew. If you could believe Sal, the girls in public school had the girls at my Catholic school beat hands down for looks—and other things.
Thinking back, I’m not so sure. Yes, they were forced to wear the ugliest plaid skirts this side of Scotland, but there were some genuine lookers, and they were smart, too. What used to tee me off was that Sal usually had at least two coeds hanging from his shoulders, while I held up the gym wall at dances.
I admit it. I was a bit envious.
Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop.
The wagon was just turning onto Grand. When we caught up with it, Sal leaped onto the open back and gave me, huffing behind, one of his famous, one-armed boosts. He was one helluva strong kid.
I was laughing and gasping for air, when I heard the Voice.
“Watch out for those glass shards, guys.”
Giuseppe sounded like a bumblebee. If you remember those strangely vibrating, androgynous voices in the old space-alien flicks, that was Monteverdi. The only time I was able to imitate him was at university, when I inhaled helium gas from a balloon on a dare.
“Hey, Giuseppe, get any good loot yet?”
Sal had turned toward the old man sitting like Ichabod Crane on the driver’s bench, his long legs splayed out over the rims of the buckboard.
“Whoa, girl. Whoa!”
The horse stopped and did what stopped horses usually do.
In our neighborhood, it was never picked up—it was eventually consumed by the flies or washed away by the rain.
“Got my eye on some stuff over on…”
I listened to the banter between Giuseppe and Sal, as he related how he had spotted some “stuff” over in the “rich” section.
“You guys wanna help me load it? Two bits fer each o’ ya.”
“Hey, Giuseppe, this sure as hell beats walkin’. You game, Berto?”
I didn’t have to be home for a while.
“Sure.”
Two bits was a fortune.
Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop.
Strange. I didn’t think of it back then, but a certain incongruity hits me now that I’m almost plant food: If I was such a smart kid, why didn’t I think it unusual for Giuseppe to be seen over in the rich section without his horse and wagon? And why did he waste time in our little slice of heaven, where there was nothing to be had?
We passed the local row of storefronts. We waved at Mr. Ruddy in his shoe-repair shop and Mr. Huff in his electrical-motor shop. As we passed the candy lady’s place, Giuseppe turned and spat a cud of tobacco chaw onto her sidewalk, while Sal and I laughed and clapped.
I still missed Bernice.
I could see Thomas the barber cutting someone’s hair. He gave us a left-handed wave without missing a beat, as those magic fingers on his right hand kept doing their snip-snip-click with his scissors. I would stop by later and sweep out his store and talk about school before heading over to Dr. Agnelli’s clinic.
Even the air changed as we turned off the main street. The sunlight was brighter, the sky a deeper blue, as we entered “their” neighborhood. “They” were the ones who made things happen—using the labor of our parents. They lived in individual brick homes with detached garages to store their vehicles. Their streets and driveways sported the latest, 1954-model cars.
It was the dawn of the tailfin age—shiny metal beasts in all shades of primary colors and pastels. We even saw a few of those fabulous, Batmobile Corvettes that always brought a gleam to Sal’s eyes.
“See that, Berto? Someday I’m gonna have one a’ those.”
He pointed at a low-slung, fire-engine-red convertible that seemed to be moving even while parked.
“Sure, Sal, and I’m gonna be a famous doctor who refuses to see you ‘cause you stink!”
Needless to say, underarm deodorants were not within the budgets of most of us back then. He gave me a friendly punch on the shoulder, which I felt for a week afterward.
Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop.
“Here she is boys, the mother lode!”
Giuseppe guided the wagon next to the curb in front of a huge home that I later learned was called Tudor style. Back then all I knew was it looked bigger than the little church attached to our old grammar school.
Sitting on the sidewalk was furniture of all descriptions: tables, couches, dining-room chairs, lounge chairs, bookcases, and stuff I didn’t recognize. I wasn’t sure the old wagon could haul it all, much less the poor horse pulling it.
“Come on, Berto, were gonna earn two bits!”
Sal jumped down and I followed. We stood in awe, running our hands over brocaded upholstery—something else I learned about later—and smooth, dark-wood tables so shiny we could see our faces in the tops. I couldn’t take my eyes off a small desk and chair with a bookcase beside it. Sal plopped himself in a padded armchair and pretended to smoke a stogie.
“Ain’t got all day, guys. Git a move on!”
One did not disobey the bumblebee.
We loaded the wagon from stem to stern.
“Hey, we didn’t do too bad a job, Berto.”
“Sal, where we gonna sit?”
“Hop up here, boys. There’s room on the bench. I might even let ya ride old Mandy, here.”
Our eyes widened and our jaws dropped. Giuseppe never let anyone ride the old mare. We hopped up and squeezed next to him. He reached into his pocket and bit off another tobacco chaw then held it out to us.
Sal winked at me. He took the stick and bit off a piece. I shook my head. I already had seen too many sick smokers and chewers at Dr. Agnelli’s clinic.
“Giddap, old girl.”
Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop.
I caught the movement out of the corner of my left eye. A woman stood looking out the big picture window of that castle-sized house. She smiled and waved. I saw Giuseppe, hand low down, wave back.
“O-h-h, I don’t feel so good!”
Sal looked green around the gills. Good thing he was sitting on the edge of the bench. He leaned over and puked, until his face turned amber.
Giuseppe laughed.
“Want another chaw, kid?”
Sal leaned over and puked again.
“Who wants to ride Mandy?”
Now Sal didn’t look so interested.
Giuseppe pulled back on the reins and let out a “Whoa!”
“Go ahead, Berto.”
I wasn’t the most athletic kid. Hell, I was lucky I could finish running laps in gym. But I hopped down and used the trace holders to boost myself up on that poor horse’s rump. Then I slid myself forward and stroked her head. She turned around to me.
“Ready?”
“Yes, sir!”
Sal seemed to be recovering. He let out a sickly laugh.
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