The Anatomy Lesson

by Philip Roth

  This longing for a mother he’d left behind at sixteen—would he be suffering it so if he were working and well? Would he be feeling any of this so keenly? All a consequence of being mysteriously ill! But if not for the longing would he have fallen ill? Of course a large, unexpected loss can undermine anyone’s health—so will controversy and angry opposition. But undermining it still, three and four years on? How deep can a shock go? And how delicate can I be?

  Oh, too delicate, too delicate by far for even your own contradictions. The experience of contradiction is the human experience; everybody’s balancing that baggage—how can you knuckle under to that? A novelist without his irreconcilable halves, quarters, eighths, and sixteenths? Someone who hasn’t the means to make novels. Nor the right. He wasn’t leaving voluntarily, he was being drummed out of the corps. Physically unfit for being torn apart. Hasn’t the muscle for it. Hasn’t the soul.

  Equally pointless, he thought: trying to defend your work and trying to explain your pain. Once I’ve recovered, won’t indulge in either ever again. Once I’ve recovered. Terrific tribute to the indomitable will to have so bracing a thought only the morning after—and about as likely as a dead woman returning to life because of a child in a dream crying out that he’s sorry.

  Zuckerman finally realized that his mother had been his only love. And returning to school? The dream of at least being loved again by his teachers, now that she was gone. Gone and yet more present than she’d been in thirty years. Back to school and the days of effortlessly satisfying the powers that be—and of the most passionate bond of a lifetime.

  He popped a second Percodan and pushed the button lowering the partition window between the front and back seats.

  “Why am I unacceptable to you. Ricky?”

  “You’re not. You’re interesting to me.”

  Since their negotiating session in the bar she’d dropped the “sir.”

  “What interests you about me?”

  “The way you see things. That would interest anyone.”

  “But you wouldn’t work for me in New York.”

  “No.”

  “You think I exploit women, don’t you? You think I debase them. A girl works at the Merchandise Mart making a hundred a week and she’s not being exploited, but a girl works in a Supercarnal flick, makes five hundred in a day—in a day, Rick—and she’s being exploited, is that what you think?”

  “I don’t get paid to think.”

  “Oh, you know how to think, all right. Who do you fuck out here, a good-looking independent young woman like you? In your position you must get a lot of cock.”

  “Look, I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “You got a boyfriend?”

  “I’m just divorced.”

  “You a parent?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? You don’t want to bring children into the world? Why, because you feminists find motherhood a nuisance or is it because of The Bomb? I’m asking why you don’t have kids, Ricky. What are you afraid of?”

  “Is a childless home a sign of fear to the owner of Lickety Split?”

  “Very sharp. But what are you sparring with me for? I’m asking you a serious question about life. I’m a serious person. Why won’t you buy that? I’m not saying I’m sinless—but I am a man of values, t am a crusading person, and so I talk about what I’m crusading for. Why is it hard for people to take that at face value? I have been crucified on the sexual cross—I am a martyr on the sexual cross, and don’t give me that look, it’s true. Religion interests me. Not their fucking prohibitions, but religion. Jesus interests me. Why shouldn’t he? His suffering is something that I can sympathize with. I tell that to people and they look at me just like you. Egomania. Ignorance. Blasphemy. I say that on a talk show and the death threats start rolling in. But he never referred to himself, you know, as the Son of God. He insisted that he was just the Son of Man, a member of the human race, with all that goes with it. But the Christians made him into the Son of God anyway, and became everything he preached against, a new Israel in just the wrong way. But the new Israel is me. Ricky—Milton Appel.”

  That got her.

  “You and Jesus. My God,” she said, “there really are people who think they can get away with anything.”

  “Why not Jesus? They hated him too. Men of sorrows acquainted with grief. Appel Dolorosus.”

  “ ‘Grief? What about pleasure? Power? What about wealth?”

  “That’s true. I admit it. I love pleasure. I love to ejaculate. To ejaculate is a deep, wonderful feeling. My wife and I had sex the night before I left. She had her period, I was horny, and so she gave me a blow job. It felt great. It felt so great that I couldn’t sleep. Two hours later I jerked off. I didn’t want to let go of the feeling. I wanted to feel it again. But she woke up and saw me coming, and she started to cry. She doesn’t understand. But you do, don’t you, a woman of the world like you?”

  She did not bother to answer. Did what she was paid to do and drove. Superhuman restraint, Zuckerman thought. Make some novelist a wonderful wife.

  “So you do think I debase women. That’s why whatever I would offer you, you still wouldn’t come with me back to New York.”

  When she did not reply, Zuckerman leaned forward in his seat, the better to drop each word in her ear. “Because you are a God damn feminist.”

  “Look, Mr. Dolorosus, I drive who pays me. This is my car and I do what I like. I work for myself. I’m not under contract to Hefner out here—I don’t want to be under contract to you there.”

  “Because you are a God damn feminist.”

  “No, because that partition between you and me in this car is there for me as well. Because the truth is I’m not interested at all in your life, and I certainly wouldn’t go to New York and become involved in that kind of setup. It smells bad, if you want to know my opinion. And it’s your honesty that stinks the most. You think because you’re honest and open about it, that it’s acceptable. But that doesn’t make it acceptable. It only makes it worse. Even your honesty is a way of debasing things.”

  “Am I worse than the executives you drive around who are screwing the American worker? Am I worse than the politicians you drive around who are screwing the American nigger?”

  “I don’t know. Most of them are quiet in the back. They’ve got their briefcases and they’re writing out their little notes, and I don’t know how awful they are, or if they’re awful at all. But I do know about you.”

  “And I’m the worst person you ever met.”

  “Probably. I don’t know you intimately. I’m sure your wife would say you were.”

  “The worst.”

  “I would think so.”

  “You feel sorry for my wife, do you?”

  “Oh God, yes. To try to have an ordinary life, to try to bring up a child and to have a fairly decent life—and with a man like you? With a man whose life is devoted to ‘cunts’ and ‘cocks’ and ‘coming,’ to ‘pussy’ or whatever you like to call it—?”

  “You feel sorry for me too, Ricky?”

  “You? No. You want it. But she doesn’t want that kind of life. I feel sorry for your child.”

  “The poor child too.”

  “Personally I would think your child’s chances are nil, Mr. Appel. Oh, I’m sure you do love him in your egomaniacal way—but to grow up and know that that was what your father did for a living, and that he was pretty famous for it, well, that’s a tough start in life, isn’t it? Of course if you want him to run your empire, he’s set. But is that what you’re sending him to the best private schools for? To run Lickety Split? I feel sorry for your wife, I feel sorry for your child, and I feel sorry for all the people who sit in the movie theaters to watch your Supercarnal productions. I’m sorry for them if that’s what it takes to get them turned on. And I’m sorry for the girls in those films, if that’s how they have to make a living. I wasn’t trained for anything, either. I was trained to get married, and that didn’t work out very w
ell. So now I’m a chauffeur. And a good one. I wouldn’t do the kind of work they do, never—and not because I’m feminist: because it would ruin my sex life, and I like sex too much to have it ruined. I’d have the scars forever. Privacy is as good a cause as pornography, you know. No, I don’t find you unacceptable because I’m a God damn feminist. It’s because I’m a human being. You don’t just debase women. Only part of it’s the exploitation of these dumb women. You debase everything. Your life is filth. On every level. And you make it all the more awful because you won’t even shut up.”

  “Oh. but let’s just stick to women, my dear human being—to those girls you feel so sorry for. who don’t happen to run their own limousines. There are girls, some of them, in my pictures, that are such bubbleheads they don’t even know how to brush their teeth—and I pay ‘em a hundred bucks an hour. Is this debasing women? Is this scarring them for life, giving them money to pay the rent? I’ve been on the set where I’ve taken girls to the bathroom and washed then feet for them because they were so dirty. Is this debasing women? If someone smells bad, we show her feminine hygiene. Because some of these girls, my dear human being, some of them come in off the street stinking even worse than I do. But we go out and buy the whole kit for them and show them how to use it. Most of these girls, when they work for me, they enter idiots and leave at least resembling what I take to be people. Shirley Temper happens to be as bright as any actress working in the legitimate theater. Why is she doing it? She’s doing it because she is pulling in a thousand dollars a day. My money. Is that debasing women? She’s doing it because a Broadway play opens and closes in a week and she’s back with the unemployed, while with me she works all the lime, has the dignity of a working person, and gets the chance to play a whole variety of roles. Sure, some of them are the classic woman who is looking for a strong pimp to rob them blind. Some people are always going to be exploited and not take responsibility for their own lives. Exploiting goes on everywhere there are people willing to be exploited. But Shirley says fuck that. And she didn’t belong to the college sorority with Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem. Scranton PA, that was her college. Fuck that, she said, age sixteen, and got out from behind a checkout counter at the A&P—out of the Scranton slums to make fifty grand her first year in the business. At sixteen. The girls who are in porno films, most of them take pride in what they do. It turns you on to drive the big limo and dress yourself up in a man’s uniform? Well, it turns them on to show their pussies. They enjoy the exhibitionism, and who are you in your Gestapo boots to tell them that they shouldn’t? There are guys out there jerking off over them. They love that. That’s exploitation? That’s debasement? That’s power, sister. What you have got behind this wheel. Marilyn Monroe is dead, but kids all over America are still flogging their dum-dums over those tits. That’s exploitation of Marilyn Monroe? That’s her immortality! She’s nothing in the ground, but to kids who haven’t even been born yet, she’ll always be this great piece of ass. These are women who feel no shame about fucking in public. They love it. Nobody’s forcing anybody to do anything. If the ribbon counter at Woolworth’s makes them feel liberated, let ‘em work there for two bucks an hour. There are enough bodies you can get, enough women who want to do it for money or kicks, for catharsis, that you don’t have to force people. The fact is that the women have it easier than anybody. They can fake orgasm, but for the poor guy up in front of the lights, it’s no picnic. The guy who exhibits the greatest bravado, who says. Hey, I’d like to do that, I got a big cock—he can’t get it up at all. Exploited? If anybody’s exploited it’s the God damn men. Most of these girls are on a total ego trip in front of the camera. Sure I had animals in my last film, but nobody there forced anybody to fuck them. Chuck Raw, my star, walked off the picture because of the dog. He says, ‘I love dogs and I won’t be a party to this, Milton. Banging women fucks up their minds—they can’t handle it. Any dog who fucks a woman is finished as an animal.’ I respected Chuck for that. I have the courage of my convictions, he had the courage of his. Don’t you get the idea yet? Nobody is putting these people in chains! E am taking them out of their chains! I am a monster with something to offer! I am changing American fucking forever! I am setting this country free!”

  A third Percodan and the stupor began. Suddenly no words would stick in his mind, all the words were flying apart and no two seconds would hold together. To know what he was thinking required an enormous effort. By the time he found an answer, he could no longer remember the question. Laboriously he had to begin again. Beyond the fog there was a moat and beyond the moat an airy blankness. Don’t ask how, but beyond that, out of the window and above the lake, he saw a marvel of gentle inaudible movement: snow failing. There was nothing that could ever equal coming home through the snow in late afternoon from Chancellor Avenue School, That was the best life had to offer. Snow was childhood, protected, carefree, loved, obedient. Then came audacity, after audacity doubt, after doubt pain. What does chronic pain teach us? Step to the front of the class and write your answer on the board. Chronic pain teaches us: one. what well-being is; two, what cowardice is; three, a little something of what it is to be sentenced to hard labor. Pain is work. What else, Nathan, what above everything? It teaches us who is boss. Correct. Now list all the ways of confronting chronic pain. You can suffer it. You can struggle against it. You can hate it. You can attempt to understand it. You can try running. And if none of these techniques provide relief? Percodan, said Zuckerman; if nothing else works, then the hell with consciousness as the highest value: drink vodka and take drugs. To make so much of consciousness may have been my first mistake. There is much to be said for irresponsible stupefaction. That is something I never believed and am still reluctant to admit. But it’s true: pain is ennobling in the long run, I’m sure, but a dose of stupefaction isn’t bad either. Stupefaction can’t make you a hero the way suffering can, but it certainly is merciful and sweet.

  By the time the limousine drew up in front of Bobby’s town house, Zuckerman had emptied the last drop from his flask and was ready for the cemetery. On the front steps, in fur hat. storm coat, and buckled black galoshes, an old man was trying to sweep away the snow. It was falling heavily now, and as soon as he got to the bottom step, he had to start again at the top. There were four steps and the old man kept going up and down them with his broom.

  Zuckerman, watching from the car: “It’s not called the vale of tears for nothing.”

  Later “You don’t want to be a doctor, you want to be a magician.”

  Ricky came around to open his door. As he could barely think what he was thinking, he couldn’t begin to surmise what she might be thinking. But that was fine—to be dumb to all that was a blessing. Especially as what you thought they were thinking wasn’t what they were thinking, but no less your invention than anything else. Oh, ironic paranoia is the worst. Usually when you’re busy with your paranoia at least the irony is gone and you really want to win. But to see your roaring, righteous hatred as a supremely comical act subdues no one but yourself. “Be out in ten minutes,” he told her. “Just going in to get laid.”

  He started toward the old man still vainly sweeping the stairs.

  “Mr. Freytag?”

  “Yes? Who are you? What is it?”

  Even in his stupor, Zuckerman understood. Who is dead, where is the body? What savage catastrophe, the old man was asking, had overtaken which of his beloved, irreplaceable kin? They belong to another history, these old Jewish people, a history that is not ours, a way of being and loving that is not ours, that we do not want for ourselves, that would be horrible for us, and yet, because of that history, they cannot leave you unaffected when their faces show such fear.

  “Nathan Zuckerman.” Identifying himself required a difficult, concentrated moment of thought. “Zuck,” Zuckerman said.

  “My God, Zuck! But Bobby’s not here. Bobby’s at school. Bobby’s mother died. I lost my wife.”

  “I know.”

  “Of course!
My thoughts are everywhere! Except where I am! My thoughts—they’re so scattered!”

  “I’m taking you to the cemetery.”

  Mr. Freytag nearly tripped over himself backing into the stairs. Maybe he smelled the drink or maybe it was the sight of the long black car.

  “The car is mine.”

  “Zuck, what a boat. My God.”

  “I hit the jackpot, Mr. Freytag.”

  “Bobby told me. Isn’t that wonderful. Isn’t that something.”

  “Let’s,” said Zuckerman. “Go. Now.” If he got back into the car he wouldn’t collapse.

  “But I’m waiting for Gregory.” He pushed up his sleeve to check the time. “He should be home any minute. I don’t want him taking a fall. He runs everywhere. He doesn’t look. If anything should happen to that boy—! I have to get salt to sprinkle—before he gets home. Ice will never form once you get the salt in under the snow. It eats from beneath. Hey, your hat! Zuck, you’re standing here without a hat!”

  Inside, Zuckerman made for a chair and sat. Mr. Freytag was speaking to him from the kitchen. “The thick crystal salt—the kosher salt—’’ A very long disquisition on salt.

  Navajo carpet. Teak furniture. Noguchi lamps.

  Hyde Park Shakerism.

  Yet things were missing. Pale shadows at eye level of paintings that had been removed. Holes in the plaster where hooks had been. The property settlement. The wife got them. Took the records too. In the shelves beneath the phonograph only Four records left, their jackets tom and tattered. The living-room bookshelves looked plundered as well. All that Bobby had got to keep intact seemed to be Gregory.