“Mr. Strite flatters us,” she whispered, her eyes smiling straight and hard into Jean’s. (Hurt and hurt. . . .)
“And why does that give you so much pleasure?” He dragged the words as though he were pounding them out with two fingers on the typewriter.
The name without the pain—she thought to say; and did not say. All at once she lost her desire to punish him; she no more wanted to “hurt this man” for he was no more man than she was woman. She would not do him the honor of hurting him. She must reduce him as she felt herself reduced. She must cut out from him what made him a man, as she had let be cut out from her what would have made her a woman. He was no man: he was a dried-up intellectual rabbit; he was sterile; empty and hollow as she was.
Missis Butter lying up on her pillow would count over to Missis Wiggam the fine points of her tragedy: how she had waited two days to be delivered of a dead baby; how it wouldn’t have been so bad if the doctor hadn’t said it was a beautiful baby with platinum-blond hair exactly like hers (and hers bleached unbelievably, but never mind, Missis Wiggam had come to believe in it like Joe and Mister Butter, another day and Missis Flinders herself, intellectual sceptic though she was, might have been convinced) ; and how they would pay the last instalment on—what a baby carriage, Missis Wiggam, you’d never believe me!—and sell it second-hand for half its worth. I know when I was caught with my first, Missis Wiggam would take up the story her mouth had been open for. And that Missis Flinders was sure a funny one. . ..
But I am not such a funny one, Margaret wanted, beneath her bright and silly smile, behind her cloud of cigarette smoke (for Jean had given in; the whole package sat gloomily on Margaret’s lap) to say to them; even though in my “crowd” the girls keep the names they were born with, even though we sleep for a little variety with one another’s husbands, even though I forget as often as Jean—Mister Flinders to you—to empty the pan under the icebox. Still I too have known my breasts to swell and harden, I too have been unable to sleep on them for their tenderness to weight and touch, I too have known what it is to undress slowly and imagine myself growing night to night. . .. I knew this for two months, my dear Missis Wiggam; I had this strange joy for two months, my dear Missis Butter. But there was a night last week, my good ladies, which Mister Flinders and I spent in talk—and damn fine talk, if you want to know, talk of which I am proud, and talk not one word of which you with your grocery-and-baby minds, could have understood; in a regime like this, Jean said, it is a terrible thing to have a baby—it means the end of independent thought and the turning of everything into a scheme for making money; and there must be institutions such as there are in Russia, I said, for taking care of the babies and their mothers; why in a time like this, we both said, to have a baby would be suicide—good-bye to our plans, good-bye to our working out of schemes for each other and the world—our courage would die, our hopes concentrate on the sordid business of keeping three people alive, one of whom would be a burden and an expense for twenty years. . . . And then we grew drunk for a minute making up the silliest names that we could call it if we had it—and what a tough little thing it is, I said, look, look, how it hangs on in spite of its loving mother jumping off tables and broiling herself in hot water . . . until Jean, frightened at himself, washed his hands of it: we mustn’t waste any more time, the sooner these things are done the better. And I, as though the ether cap had already been clapped to my nose, agreed off-handedly. That night I did not pass my hands contentedly over my hard breasts; that night I gave no thought to the nipples grown suddenly brown and competent; I packed, instead, my suitcase: I filled it with all the white clothes I own. Why are you taking white clothes to the hospital, Jean said to me. I laughed. Why did I? White, for a bride; white, for a corpse; white, for a woman who refuses to be a woman. . . .
“Are you all right, Margaret?” (They were out now, safely out on Fifth Avenue, driving placidly past the Plaza where ancient coachmen dozed on the high seats of the last hansoms left in New York).
“Yes, dear,” she said mechanically, and forgot to turn on her smile. Pity for him sitting there in stolid inadequacy filled her. He was a man, and he could have made her a woman. She was a woman, and could have made him a man. He was not a man; she was not a woman. In each of them the life-stream flowed to a dead end.
And all this time that the blood, which Missis Wiggam and Missis Butter stored up preciously in themselves every year to make a baby for their husbands, was flowing freely and wastefully out of Missis Flinders—toward what? would it pile up some day and make a brook? would it congeal within her and make a crazy woman?—all this time Mr. Strite, remembering, with his pudgy face, his mother, drove his taxi softly along the curb; no weaving in and out of traffic for Mr. Strite, no spurting at the corners and cheating the side-street traffic, no fine heed-less rounding of rival cars for Mr. Strite; he kept his car going at a slow and steady roll, its nose poked blunt ahead, following the straight and narrow—Mr. Strite knew what it was to carry a woman home from the hospital.
But what in their past had warranted this? She could remember a small girl going from dolls to books, from books with colored pictures to books with frequent conversations; from such books to the books at last that one borrowed from libraries, books built up of solemn text from which you took notes; books which were gray to begin with, but which opened out to your eyes subtle layers of gently shaded colors. (And where in these texts did it say that one should turn one’s back on life? Had the coolness of the stone library at college made one afraid? Had the ivy nodding in the open dormitory windows taught one too much to curl and squat looking out?) And Jean? What book, what professor, what strange idea, had taught him to hunch his shoulders and stay indoors, had taught him to hide behind his glasses? Whence the fear that made him put, in cold block letters, implacably above his desk the sign announcing him “Not at Home” to life?
Missis Flinders, my husband scaled the hospital wall at four O’clock in the morning, frantic I tell you. . . . But I just don’t understand you,
To be driving like this at midday through New York; with Jean do you understand her, Missis Wiggam, would your husband. . .? Why goodness, no, Mister Wiggam would sooner. . . ! And there he was, and they asked him, Shall we try an operation, Mister Butter? scaled the wall . . . shall we try an operation? (Well, you see, we are both writers, my husband and I . . . well, not exactly stories) if there’s any risk to Shirley, he said, there mustn’t be any risk to Shirley . . . Missis Wiggam’s petulant, childish face, with its sly contentment veiled by what she must have thought a grown-up expression: Mister Wiggam bought me this negligee new, surprised me with it, you know—and generally a saving man, Mister Wiggam, not tight, but with three children—four now! Hetty, he says, I’m not going to have you disgracing us at the hospital this year, he says. Why the nurses will all remember that flannel thing you had Mabel and Suzy and Antoinette in, they’ll talk about us behind our backs. (It wasn’t that I couldn’t make the flannel do again, Missis Butter, it wasn’t that at all.) But he says, Hetty, you’ll just have a new one this year, he says, and maybe it’ll bring us luck, he says—you know, he was thinking maybe this time we’d have a boy . . . Well, I just have to laugh at you, Missis Flinders, not wanting one, why my sister went to doctors for five years and spent her good money just trying to have one. . . . Well, poor Mister Wiggam, so the negligee didn’t work, I brought him another little girl—but he didn’t say boo to me, though I could see he was disappointed. Hetty, he says, we’ll just have another try! Oh I thought I’d die, with Miss Kane standing right there you know (though they do say these nurses . . .); but that’s Mister Wiggam all over; he wouldn’t stop a joke for a policeman. . . . No, I just can’t get over you, Missis Flinders, if Gawd was willing to let you have a baby—and there really isn’t anything wrong with your insides?
Jean’s basket of fruit standing on the bed table, trying its level inadequate best, poor pathetic inarticulate intellectual basket of fruit, to comfort, to bloom
, to take the place of Jean himself who would come in later with Sam Butter for visiting hour. Jean’s too-big basket of fruit standing there, embarrassed. Won’t you have a peach, Missis Wiggam (I’m sure they have less acid)? Just try an apple, Missis Butter? Weigh Jean’s basket of fruit against Mister Wiggam’s negligee for luck, against Mister Butter scaling the wall at four in the morning for the mother of his dead baby. Please have a pear, Miss Kane; a banana, Joe? How they spat the seeds from Jean’s fruit! How it hurt her when, unknowing, Missis Butter cut away the brown bruised cheek of Jean’s bright-eyed, weeping apple! Jean! they scorn me, these ladies. They laugh at me, dear, almost as though I had no “husband,” as though I were a “fallen woman.” Jean, would you buy me a new negligee if I bore you three daughters? Jean, would you scale the wall if I bore you a dead baby? . . . Jean, I have an inferiority complex because I am an intellectual. . . . But a peach, Missis Wiggam! can’t I possibly tempt you?
To be driving like this at midday through New York; with Jean bobbing like an empty ghost (for she could see he was unhappy, as miserable as she, he too had had an abortion) on the side-seat; with a taxi driver, solicitous, respectful to an ideal, in front; was this the logical end of that little girl she remembered, of that girl swinging hatless across a campus as though that campus were the top of the earth? And was this all they could give birth to, she and Jean, who had closed up their books one day and kissed each other on the lips and decided to marry?
And now Mr. Strite, with his hand out, was making a gentle right-hand turn. Back to Fifth Avenue they would go, gently rolling, in Mr. Strite’s considerate charge. Down Fourteenth Street they would go, past the stores unlike any stores in the world; packed to the windows with imitation gold and imitation embroidery, with imitation men and women coming to stand in the doorways and beckon with imitation smiles; while on the sidewalks streamed the people unlike any other people in the world, drawn from every country, from every stratum, intellectual and social—carrying babies (the real thing, with pinched anaernic faces) and parcels (imitation finery priced low in the glittering stores). There goes a woman, with a flat, fat face, will produce five others just like herself, to dine off one-fifth the inadequate quantity her Mister earns today. These are the people not afraid to perpetuate themselves (forbidden to stop, indeed) and they will go on and on (humming “The best things in life are free”) until the bottom of the world is filled with them; and suddenly there will be enough of them to combine their cock-eyed notions and take over the world to suit themselves. While I, while I and my Jean, with our good clear heads will one day go spinning out of the world and leave nothing behind . . . only diplomas crumbling in the museums. . ..
The mad street ended with Fifth Avenue; was left behind.
They were nearing home. Mr. Strite, who had never seen them before (who would never again, in all likelihood, for his territory was far up-town) was seeing them politely to the door. As they came near home all of Margaret’s fear and pain gathered in a knot in her stomach. There would be nothing new in their house; there was nothing to expect; yet she wanted to find something there that she knew she could not find, and surely the house (once so gay, with copies of old paintings, with books which lined the walls from floor to ceiling, with papers and cushions and typewriters) would be suddenly empty and dead, suddenly, for the first time, a group of rooms unalive as rooms with “For Rent” still pasted on the windows. And Jean? did he know he was coming home to a place which had suffered no change, but which would be different forever afterward? Jean had taken off his glasses; passed his hand tiredly across his eyes; was sucking now as though he expected rerief, some answer, on the tortoise-shell curve which wound around his ear.
Mr. Strite would not allow his cab to cease motion with a jerk. Mr. Strite allowed his cab to slow down even at the corner (where was the delicatessen that sold the only loose ripe olives in the Village), so they rolled softly past No. 14 (where lived Kilgreen who wrote plays which would never be produced and dropped in at breakfast time for a hair of the dog that bit him the night before) ; on past the tenement which would eventually be razed to give place to modern three-room apartments with In-a-Dor beds; and then slowly, so slowly that Mr. Strite must surely be an artist as well as man who had had a mother, drew up and slid to a full stop before No. 20, where two people named Mister and Missis Flinders rented themselves a place to hide from life (both life of the Fifth Avenue variety, and life of the common, or Fourteenth Street, variety : in short, life).
So Jean, with his glasses on his nose once more, descended; held out his hand; Mr. Strite held the door open and his face most modestly averted; and Margaret Flinders painfully and carefully swung her legs down again from the seat and alighted, step by step, with care and confusion. The house was before them; it must be entered. Into the house they must go, say farewell to the streets, to Mr. Strite who had guided them through a tour of the city, to life itself; into the house they must go and hide. It was a fact that Mister Flinders (was he reluctant to come home?) had forgotten his key; that Missis Flinders must delve under the white clothes in her suitcase and find hers; that Mr. Strite, not yet satisfied that his charges were safe, sat watchful and waiting in the front of his cab. Then the door gave. Then Jean, bracing it with his foot, held out his hand to Margaret. Then Mr. Strite came rushing up the steps (something had told him his help would be needed again!), rushing up the steps with the basket of fruit hanging on his arm, held out from his body as though what was the likes of him doing holding a woman’s basket just home from the hospital. “You’ve forgot your fruit, Missis!”
Weakly they glared at the fruit come to pursue them; come to follow them up the stairs to their empty rooms; but that was not fair; come, after all, to comfort them. “You must have a peach,” Margaret said.
No, Mr. Strite had never cared for peaches; the skin got in his teeth.
“You must have an apple,” Margaret said.
Well, no, he must be getting on uptown. A cigarette (he waved it, deprecated the smoke it blew in the lady’s face) was good enough for him.
“But a pear, just a pear,” Margaret said passionately.
Mr. Straite wavered, standing on one foot. “Maybe he doesn’t want any fruit,” said Jean harshly.
“Not want any fruit!” cried Margaret gayly, indignantly. Not want any fruit?—ridiculous. Not want the fruit my poor Jean bought for his wife in the hospital? Three days I spent in a Maternity Home, and I produced, with the help of my husband, one basket of fruit (tied with ribbon, pink—for boys). Not want any of our fruit? I couldn’t bear it, I couldn’t bear it. . . .
Mr. Strite leaned over; put out a hand and gingerly selected a pear—“For luck,” he said, managing an excellent American smile. They watched him trot down the steps to his cab, all the time holding his pear as though it were something he would put in a memory book. And still they stayed, because Margaret said foolishly, “Let’s see him oil”; because she was ashamed, suddenly, before Jean; as though she had cut her hair unbecomingly, as though she had wounded herself in some unsightly way—as though (summing up her thoughts as precisely, as decisively as though it had been done on an adding-machine) she had stripped and revealed herself not as a woman at all, but as a creature who would not be a woman and could not be a man. And then they turned (for there was nothing else to stay for, and on the street and in the sun they were ashamed as though they had been naked)—and went in the door and heard it swing to, pause on its rubbery hinge, and finally click behind them.
The District Doctor
IVAN TURGENIEV
ONE day in autumn on my way back from a remote part of the country I caught cold and fell ill. Fortunately the fever attacked me in the district town at the inn; I sent for the doctor. In half-an-hour the district doctor appeared, a thin, dark-haired man of middle height. He pre-scribed me the usual sudorific, ordered a mustard-plaster to be put on, very deftly slid a five-ruble note up his sleeve, coughing drily and looking away as he did so, and then was getting
up to go home, but somehow fell into talk and remained. I was exhausted with feverishness; I foresaw a sleepless night, and was glad of a little chat with a pleasant companion. Tea was served. My doctor began to converse freely. He was a sensible fellow, and expressed himself with vigour and some humour. Queer things happen in the world: you may live a long while with some people, and be on friendly terms with them, and never once speak openly with them from your soul; with others you have scarcely time to get acquainted, and all at once you are pouring out to him—or he to you—all your secrets, as though you were at confession. I don’t know how I gained the confidence of my new friend—anyway, with nothing to lead up to it, he told me a rather curious incident; and here I will report his tale for the information of the indulgent reader. I will try to tell it in the doctor’s own words.
“You don’t happen to know,” he began in a weak and quavering voice (the common result of the use of unmixed Berezov snuff) ; “you don’t happen to know the judge here, Mylov, Pavel Lukich? . . . You don’t know him? . . . Well, it’s all the same.” (He cleared his throat and rubbed his eyes.) “Well, you see, the thing happened, to tell you exactly without mistake, in Lent, at the very time of the thaws. I was sitting at his house—our judge’s you know—playing preference. Our judge is a good fellow, and fond of playing preference. Suddenly” (the doctor made frequent use of this word, suddenly) “they tell me, ’There’s a servant asking for you.’ I say, ‘What does he want?’ They say, ‘He has brought a note—it must be from a patient.’ ‘Give me the note,’ I say. So it is from a patient—well and good—you understand—it’s our bread and butter. . . . But this is how it was: a lady, a widow, writes to me; she says, ‘My daughter is dying. Come, for God’s sake!’ she says, ‘and the horses have been sent for you.’ . . . Well, that’s all right. But she was twenty miles from the town, and it was midnight out of doors, and the roads in such a state, my word! And as she was poor herself, one could not expect more than two silver rubles, and even that problematic; and perhaps it might only be a matter of a roll of linen and a sack of oatmeal in payment. However, duty, you know, before everything: a fellow-creature may be dying. I hand over my cards at once to Kalliopin, the member of the provincial commission, and return home. I look; a wretched little trap was standing at the steps, with peasant’s horses, fat—too fat—and their coat as shaggy as felt; and the coachman sitting with his cap off out of respect. Well, I think to myself, ‘It’s clear, my friend, these patients aren’t rolling in riches.’ . . . You smile; but I tell you, a poor man like me has to take everything into consideration. . . . If the coachman sits like a prince, and doesn’t touch his cap, and even sneers at you behind his beard, and flicks his whip—then you may bet on six rubles. But this case, I saw, had a very different air. However, I think there’s no help for it; duty before everything. I snatch up the most necessary drugs, and set off. Will you believe it? I only just managed to get there at all. The road was infernal: streams, snow, water-courses, and the dyke had suddenly burst there—that was the worst of it! However, I arrived at last. It was a little thatched house. There was a light in the windows; that meant they expected me. I was met by an old lady, very venerable, in a cap. ’save her!’ she says; ’she is dying.’ I say, ‘Pray don’t distress yourself—Where is the invalid?’ ‘Come this way.’ I see a clean little room, a lamp in the corner; on the bed a girl of twenty, unconscious. She was in a burning heat, and breathing heavily—it was fever. There were two other girls, her sisters, scared and in tears. ‘Yesterday,’ they tell me, ’she was perfectly well and had a good appetite; this morning she complained of her head, and this evening, suddenly, you see, like this.’ I say again: ‘Pray don’t be uneasy.’ It’s a doctor’s duty, you know—and I went up to her and bled her, told them to put on a mustard-plaster, and prescribed a mixture. Meantime I looked at her; I looked at her, you know—there, by God! I had never seen such a face!—she was a beauty, in a word! I felt quite shaken with pity. Such lovely features; such eyes! . . . But, thank God! she became easier; she fell into a perspiration, seemed to come to her senses, looked round, smiled, and passed her hand over her face. . . . Her sisters bent over her. They ask, ‘How are you?’ ‘All right,’ she says, and turns away. I looked at her; she had fallen asleep. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘now the patient should be left alone.’ So we all went out on tiptoe; only a maid remained, in case she was wanted. In the parlour there was a samovar standing on the table, and a bottle of rum; in our profession one can’t get on without it. They gave me tea; asked me to stop the night. . .. I consented: where could I go, indeed, at that time of night? The old lady kept groaning. ‘What is it?’ I say; ’she will live;, don’t worry yourself; you had better take a little rest yourself; it is about two O’clock.’ ‘But will you send to wake me if anything happens?’ ‘Yes, yes.’ The old lady went away, and the girls too went to their own room; they made up a bed for me in the parlour. Well, I went to bed—but I could not get to sleep, for a wonder; for in reality I was very tired. I could not get my patient out of my head. At last I could not put up with it any longer; I got up suddenly; I think to myself, ‘I will go and see how the patient is getting on.’ Her bedroom was next to the parlour. Well, I got up, and gently opened the door—how my heart beat! I looked in: the servant was asleep, her mouth wide open, and even snoring, the wretch! but the patient lay with her face towards me, and her arms flung wide apart, poor girl! I went up to her . . . when suddenly she opened her eyes and stared at me! ‘Who is it? who is it?’ I was in confusion. ’Don’t be alarmed, madam,’ I say; ‘I am the doctor; I have come to see how you feel.’ ‘You the doctor?’ ‘Yes, the doctor; your mother sent for me from the town; we have bled you, madam; now pray go to sleep, and in a day or two, please God! we will set you on your feet again.’ ‘Ah, yes, yes, doctor, don’t let me die. . . . please, please.’ ‘Why do you talk like that? God bless you!’ She is in a fever again, I think to myself; I felt her pulse; yes, she was feverish. She looked at me, and then took me by the hand. ‘I will tell you why I don’t want to die; I will tell you. . . . Now we are alone; and only, please don’t you . . . not to any one . . . Listen. . .’ I bent down; she moved her lips quite to my ear; she touched my cheek with her hair—I confess my head went round—and began to whisper. . . . I could make out nothing of it. . .. Ah, she was delirious! . . . She whispered and whispered, but so quickly, and as if it were not in Russian; at last she finished, and shivering dropped her head on the pillow, and threatened me with her finger: `Remember, doctor, to no one.’ I calmed her somehow, gave her something to drink, waked the servant, and went away.”
A Treasury of Doctor Stories Page 22