by Philip Roth
Tearing open the bigger of the two envelopes—well, he hadn’t known a thrill quite like it since the fall of 1948, when the first of the college mail began to arrive. Each day he raced home after his last class and, over his quart of milk, madly read about the life to come; not even the delivery of the first bound edition of his first published book had promised such complete emancipation as those college catalogues. On the cover of the catalogue now in his hand, a light-and-shadow study of a university tower, stark, soaring, academic Gibraltar, the very symbol of the unassailable solidity of the medical vocation. Inside the front cover, the university calendar. Jan. 4-5: Registration for Winter quarter… Jan. 4: Classes meet… He quickly turned to find “Requirements for Admission” and read until he reached “Selection Policy” and the words that would change everything.
The Committee on Admissions strives to make its decision on the basis of the ability, achievement, personality, character, and motivation of the candidates. Questions of race, color, religion, sex, marital status, age, national or ethnic origin, or geographic location have no bearing in the consideration of any application for the Pritzker School of Medicine.
They didn’t care that he was forty. He was in.
But one page back, bad news. Sixteen hours of chemistry, twelve of biology, eight of physics—merely to qualify, twice as much coursework as he’d been expecting. In science. Well, the sooner the better. When classes meet on January 4, I’ll be there to ignite my Bunsen burner. I’ll pack a bag and fly out to Chicago—over my microscope in a month! Lots of women his age were doing it—what was to stop him? A year’s grind as an undergraduate, four of medical studies, three of residency, and at forty-eight he’d be ready to open an office. That would give him twenty-five years in practice—if he could depend on his health. It was the change of professions that would restore his health. The pain would just dwindle away: if not, he’d cure himself: it would be within his power. But never again to give himself over to doctors who weren’t interested enough or patient enough or simply curious enough to see a puzzle like his through to the end.
That’s where the writing years would be of use. A doctor thinks, “Everybody ends badly, nothing I can do. He’s just dying and I can’t cure life.” But a good writer can’t abandon his character’s suffering, not to narcotics or to death. Nor can he just leave a character to his fate by insinuating that his pain is somehow deserved for being self-induced. A writer learns to stay around, has to, in order to make sense of incurable life, in order to chart the turnings of the punishing unknown even where there’s no sense to be made. His experience with all the doctors who had misdiagnosed the early stages of his mother’s tumor and then failed him had convinced Zuckerman that, even if he was washed up as a writer, he couldn’t do their job any worse than they did.
He was still in the hallway removing sheaves of application blanks from the university envelope when a UPS deliveryman opened the street door and announced a package for him. Yes, it appeared to be happening: once the worst is over, even the parcels are yours. Everything is yours. The suicide threat had forced fate’s hand—an essentially unintelligent idea that he found himself believing.
The box contained a rectangular urethane pillow about a fool and a half long and a foot wide. Promised to him a week before and forgotten by him since. Everything was forgotten in the workless monotony of his empty five hundred days. The evening’s marijuana didn’t help either. His mental activity had come to focus on managing his pain and managing his women: either he was figuring out what pills to take or scheduling arrivals and departures to minimize the likelihood of collision.
He’d been put on to the pillow at his bank. Waiting in line to cash a check—cash for Diana’s connection—trying to be patient despite the burning sensation running along the rim of his winged left scapula, he’d been tapped lightly from behind by a pint-sized white-haired gentleman with an evenly tanned sympathetic face. He wore a smart double-breasted dove-gray coat. A dove-gray hat was in the gloved hand at his side. Gloves of dove-gray suede. “I know how you can get rid of that thing,” he told Zuckerman. pointing to his orthopedic collar. The mildest Old Country accent. A helpful smile.
“How?”
“Dr. Kotler’s pillow. Eliminates chronic pain acquired during sleep. Based on research done by Dr. Kotler. A scientifically designed pillow made expressly for sufferers like yourself. With your wide shoulders and long neck, what you’re doing on an ordinary pillow is pinching nerves and causing pain. Shoulders too?” he asked. “Extended into the arms?”
Zuckerman nodded. Pain everywhere.
“And X-rays show nothing? No history of whiplash, no accident, no fall? Just on you like that, unexplained?”
“Exactly.”
“All acquired during sleep. That’s what Dr. Kotler discovered and how he came up with his pillow. His pillow will restore you to a pain-free life. Twenty dollars plus postage. Comes with a satin pillowcase. In blue only.”
“You don’t happen to be Dr. Kotler’s father?”
“Never married. Whose father I am, we’ll never know.” He handed Zuckerman a blank envelope out of his pocket. “Write on this: name, along with mailing address. I’ll see they send one tomorrow, C.O.D.”
Well, he’d tried everything else, and this playful old character clearly meant no harm. With his white wavy hair and nut-colored face, in his woolens and skins of soft dove-gray, he seemed to Zuckerman like somebody out of a children’s tale, one of those elfin elderly Jews, with large heart-shaped ears and dangling Buddha lobes, and dark earholes that looked as though they’d been dug to a burrow by a mouse; a nose of impressive length for a man barely reaching Zuckerman’s chest, a nose that broadened as it descended, so that the nostrils, each a sizable crescent, were just about hidden by the wide, weighted tip; and eyes that were ageless, polished brown protruding eyes such as you see in photographs taken of prodigious little fiddlers at the age of three.
Watching Zuckerman write his name, the old man asked, “N. as in Nathan?”
“No,” replied Zuckerman. “As in Neck.”
“Of course. You are the young fellow who has handed me those laughs. I thought I recognized you but I wasn’t sure—you’ve lost quite a number of hairs since I saw your last photo.” He removed one glove and extended his hand. “I am Dr. Kotler. I don’t make a production out of it with strangers. But you are no stranger, N. Zuckerman. I practiced in Newark for many, many years, began there long before you were born. Had my office in the Hotel Riviera down on Clinton and High before it was purchased by Father Divine.”
“The Riviera?” Zuckerman laughed and forgot for the moment about his scapula. N. as in Nostalgia. This was a character out of a child’s tale: his own. “The Riviera is where my parents spent their honeymoon weekend.”
“Lucky couple. It was a grand hotel in those days. My first office was on Academy Street near the Newark Ledger. I started with the lumbago of the boys from the paper and an examining table I bought secondhand. The fire commissioner’s girl friend had a lingerie shop just down the street. Mike Shumlin. brother of theatrical producer Herman, owned the Japtex shops. So you’re our writer. I was expecting from the way you hit and run you’d be a little bantamweight like me. I read that book. Frankly the penis Ihad almost enough of by the five hundredth time, but what a floodgate of memories you opened up to those early, youthful days. A kick for me on every page. You mention Laurel Garden on Springfield Avenue. I attended Max Schmeling’s third Fight in the U.S., staged by Nick Kline at Laurel Garden. January 1929. His opponent, an Italian, Corn, was KO’d in one and a half minutes of the first round. Every German in Newark was there—you should have heard them. Saw Willie La Morte beat Corporal lzzie Schwartz that summer—flyweight championship, fifteen rounds. You mention the Empire Burlesque on Washington, near Market. I knew the old guy who managed it, grizzled old guy named Sutherland. Hinda Wassau, the blond Polish striptease queen—knew her personally. One of my patients. Knew producer Rube Bernstein,
who Hinda married. You mention the old Newark Bears. I treated young Charlie Keller for his knee. Manager George Selkirk, one of my dearest friends. You mention the Newark Airport. When it opened up, Jerome Congleton was mayor. I attended the dedication. One hangar in those days. There the morning they cut the ribbon on the Pulaski Skyway. What a sight—a viaduct from ancient Rome rising out of the Jersey marshes. You mention the Branford Theater. Favorite place of mine. Saw the first stage shows, featuring Charley Mel son and his band. Joe Penner and his ‘Wanna Buy a Duck’ routine. Oh, Newark was my turf then. Roast beef at Murray’s. Lobsters at Dietsch’s. The tube station, gateway to New York. The locust trees along the street with their skinny twisted pods. WJZ with Vincent Lopez. WOR with John B. Gambling. Jascha Heifetz at the Mosque. The B. F. Keith theater—the old Proctor’s—featuring acts direct from the Palace on Broadway. Kitty Doner, with her sister Rose and her brother Ted. Ted sang. Rose danced. Mae Murray making a grand personal appearance. Alexander Moissi, the great Austrian actor, at the Shubert on Broad Street. George Arliss. Leslie Howard. Ethel Barrymore. A great place in those days, our dear Newark. Large enough to be big-time, small enough to walk down the street and greet people you knew. Vanished now. Everything that mattered to me down the twentieth-century drain. My birthplace, Vilna, decimated by Hitler, then stolen by Stalin. Newark, my America, abandoned by the whites and destroyed by the colored. That’s what I thought the night they set the fires in 1968. First the Second World War. then the Iron Curtain, now (he Newark Fire. I cried when that riot broke out. My beautiful Newark. I loved that city.”
“So did we all. Dr. Kotler. What are you doing in New York?”
“Good practical question. Living. Eight years now. Man in exile. Child of the times. I gave up my wonderful practice, my cherished friends, took my books and my mementos, packed the last of my pillows, and established myself here at the age of seventy. Life anew in my eighth decade on earth. Now on my way to the Metropolitan Museum. I go for the great Rembrandt. I’m studying his masterpieces a foot at a time. Quite a discipline. Very rewarding. The man was a magician. Also studying Holy Scriptures. Delving into all the translations. Amazing what’s in there. Yet the writing I don’t like. The Jews in the Bible were always involved in highly dramatic moments, but they never learned to write good drama. Not like the Greeks, in my estimation. The Greeks heard a sneeze and they took off. The sneezer becomes the hero, the one who reported the sneeze becomes the messenger, the ones who overheard the sneeze, they became the chorus. Lots of pity, lots of terror, lots of cliff-hanging and suspense. You don’t get that with the Jews in the Bible. There it’s all round-the-clock negotiation with God.” “You sound like you know how to keep going.” Wish I could say the same for myself; I wish, he thought childishly, you could teach me.
“Do as I like, Nathan. Always have. Never dented myself what counted. And I believe I know what counted. I’ve been some use to others too. Kept a balance, you might say. I want to send you a pillow. Free of charge. For the wonderful memories you brought back to life. No reason for you to be in this pain. You don’t sleep on your stomach, I trust.”
“On my side and on my back, as far as I know.” “Heard this story a thousand times. I’m sending a pillow and a case.”
And here they were. Also, tucked in the box, a typewritten note on the doctor’s stationery: “Remember, don’t place Dr. Kotler’s Pillow on top of an ordinary pillow. It does the job by itself. If there is no significant improvement in two weeks, phone me at RE 4-4482. With longstanding problems, manipulation could be required at the outset. For recalcitrant cases there are hypnotic techniques.” The letter was signed “Dr. Charles L. Kotler, Dolorologist.”
And if, by itself, the pillow worked and the pain completely vanished? He couldn’t wait for night to fall so he could take it to sleep. He couldn’t wait for it to be January 4 and the first day of class. He couldn’t wait for 1981—that was when he’d be opening his office. 1982 at the latest. He’d pack the dolorologist’s pillow for Chicago—and he’d leave the harem behind. With Gloria Galanter he’d gone too far, even for a man as disabled as himself. With Roger’s Thesaurus under his head and Gloria sitting on his face, Zuckerman understood just how little one can depend upon human suffering to produce ennobling effects. She was the wife, the coddled and irreplaceable wife, of the genial wizard who’d weaned Zuckerman reluctantly away from his triple-A bonds and nearly doubled his capital in three years. Marvin Galanter was such a fan of Carnovsky that in the beginning he’d refused even to bill Zuckerman for his services; at their first meeting the accountant told Nathan that he would pay any penalties out of his own pocket, should the IRS challenge the shelters. Carnovsky, Marvin claimed, was his own life story; for the author of that book, there was nothing whatsoever that he wouldn’t do.
Yes, he must divest himself at least of Gloria—only he couldn’t resist her breasts. Alone on the playmat, following the rheumatologist’s suggestion to try to find some means to distract himself from his pain, he sometimes thought of nothing but her breasts. Of the four women in the harem, it was with Gloria that his helplessness hit bottom—while Gloria herself seemed the happiest, in a strange and delightful way seemed the most playfully independent, tethered though she was to his wretched needs. She distracted him with her breasts and delivered his food: Green-berg’s chocolate cakes, Mrs. Herbst’s strudel, Zabar’s pumpernickel, beluga in pots from the Caviarteria, the lemon chicken from Pearl’s Chinese Restaurant, hot lasagna from “21.” She sent the chauffeur all the way down to Allen Street for the stuffed peppers from Seymour’s Parkway, and then came over in the car to heat them up for his dinner. She rushed into the little kitchenette in her red-fox Russian Cossack coat and, when she came out with the steaming pot, was wearing only her heels. Gloria was nearing forty, a firm, hefty brunette with protruding circular breasts like targets, and electrifying growths of hair. Her face could have been a Spanish mulatto’s: almond eyes, a wide, imposing jaw, and full rounded lips with peculiarly raised edges. There were bruises on her behind. He wasn’t the only primitive she babied and he didn’t care. He ate the food and he tasted the breasts. He ate the food off the breasts. There was nothing Gloria didn’t remember to carry in her bag: nippleless bra, crotchless panties, Polaroid camera, vibrating dildo. K-Y jelly, Gucci blindfold, a length of braided velvet rope—for a treat, on his birthday, a gram of cocaine. ‘Times have changed,” said Zuckerman, “since all you needed was a condom.” “A child is sick,” she said, “you bring toys.” True, and Dionysian rites were once believed to have a therapeutic effect on the physically afflicted. There were also the ancient treatments known as the imposition of hands. Gloria had classical history on her side. His own mother’s means for effecting a cure were to play casino on the edge of the bed with him when he was home with a fever. So as not to fall behind in her housework, she’d set her ironing board up in his bedroom while they gossiped about school and his friends. He loved the smell of ironing still. Gloria, lubricating a finger and slipping it in his anus, talked about her marriage to Marvin.
Zuckerman said to her, “Gloria, you’re the dirtiest woman I’ve ever met.”
“If I’m the dirtiest woman you’ve ever met, you’re in trouble. I fuck Marvin twice a week. I put down my book, put out my cigarette, turn out the light, and roll over.”
“On your back?”
“What else? And then he puts it in and I know just what to do to make him come. And then he mumbles something about tits and love and he comes. Then I put on the light and roll on my side and light up a cigarette and get on with my book. I’m reading the one you told me about. Jean Rhys.”
“What do you do to make him come?”
“I make three circles this way, and three circles the other way, and I draw my fingernail down his spine like this—and he comes.”
“So you do seven things.”
“Right. Seven things. And then he says something about my tits and love, and he comes. And then he falls asleep and I
can tum on the light again and read. This Jean Rhys terrifies me. The other night after reading her book about that shit-on woman and no money, I rolled over and kissed him and said, ‘I love you, sweetheart.’ But it’s hard fucking him, Nathan. And getting harder. You always think in a marriage, “This is as bad as it can be’—and next year it’s worse. It’s the most odious duty I’ve ever had to perform. He says to me sometimes when he’s straining to come, ‘Gloria, Gloria, say something dirty.’ I have to think hard, but I do it. He’s a wonderful father and a wonderful husband, and he deserves all the help he can get. But still, one night I really thought I couldn’t take it anymore. I put down my book and I put out the light and finally I said it to him. I said, ‘Marv, something’s gone out of our marriage.’ But he was almost snoring by then. ‘Quiet.’ he mumbles. ‘Shhhhh, go to sleep.’ I don’t know what to do. There’s nothing I can do. The odd thing and the terrible thing and the thing that’s most confusing is that without a doubt Marvin was the real love of my life and beyond a doubt I was the love of Marvin’s life and although we were never never happy, for about ten years we had a passionate marriage and all the trimmings, health, money, kids, Mercedes, a double sink and summer houses and everything. And so miserable and so attached. It makes no sense. And now I have these night monsters, three enormous night monsters: no money, death, and getting old. I can’t leave him. I’d fall apart. He’d fall apart. The kids would go nuts and they’re screwy as it is. But I need excitement, I’m thirty-eight. I need extra attention.”