The Anatomy Lesson (2 page)

To lie with him on the playmat came the four women. They were all the vibrant life he had: secretary-confidante-cook-housekeeper-companion—aside from the doses of Nixon
’
s suffering, they were the entertainment. On his back he felt like their whore, paying in sex for someone to bring him the milk and the paper. They told him their troubles and took off their clothes and lowered the orifices for Zuckerman to fill. Without a taxing vocation or a hopeful prognosis, he was theirs to do with as they wished; the more conspicuous his helplessness, the more forthright their desire. Then they ran. Washed up, downed a coffee, kneeled to kiss him goodbye, and ran off to disappear in real lives. Leaving Zuckerman on his back for whoever rang the belt next.

Well and working, he
’
d never had time for liaisons like these, not even when he
’
d been tempted. Too many wives in too few years to allow for a consortium of mistresses. Marriage had been his bulwark against the tremendous distraction of women. He
’
d married for the order, the intimacy, the dependable
comradery
, for the routine and regularity of monogamous living; he
’
d married so as never to waste himself on another affair, or go crazy with boredom at another party, or wind up alone in the living room at night after a day alone in his study. To sit alone each night doing the reading that he required to concentrate himself for the next day
’
s solitary writing was too much even for Zuckerman
’
s single-mindedness, and so into the voluptuous austerity he had enticed a woman, one wom
an at a time, a quiet, thought
ful, serious, literate, self-sufficient woman who didn
’
t require to be taken places, who was content instead to sit after dinner and read in silence across from him and his book.

Following each divorce, he discovered anew that unmarried a man had to take women places: out to restaurants, for walks in the park, to museums and the opera and the movies—not only had to go to the movies but afterwards had to discuss them. If they became lovers, there was the problem of getting away in the morning while his mind was still fresh for his work. Some women expected him to eat breakfast with them, even to talk to them over breakfast like other human beings. Sometimes they wanted to go back to bed.
He
wanted to go back to bed. It was certainly going to be more eventful in bed than back at the typewriter with the book. Much less frustrating too. You actually could complete what you set out to accomplish without ten false starts and sixteen drafts and ail that pacing around the room. So he dropped his guard—and the morning was shot.

No such temptations with the wives, not as time went by.

But pain had changed it all. Whoever spent the night was not only invited to breakfast but asked to stay on for lunch if she had the time (and if no one else was to turn up till dinner). He
’
d slip a wet washcloth and a bulging ice pack under his terry-cloth robe, and while the ice anesthetized his upper trapezius (and the orthopedic collar supported his neck), he
’
d lean back and listen in his red velvet chair. He
’
d had a fatal weakness for high-minded mates back when all he ever thought about was toiling away; excellent opportunity, immobilization, to sound out less predictably upright women than his three ex-wives. Maybe he
’
d learn something and maybe he wouldn
’
t, but at least they would help to distract him, and according to the rheumatologist at NYU, distraction, pursued by the patient with real persistence, could reduce even the worst pain to tolerable levels.

The psychoanalyst whom he consulted took a contrary position: he wondered aloud if Zuckerman hadn
’
t given up fighting the illness to
retain
(with a fairly untroubled conscience) his
“
harem of Florence Nightingales.
”
Zuckerman so resented the crack he nearly walked out. Given up? What could he do that he hadn
’
t—what was left that he was unwilling to try? Since the pains had begun in earnest eighteen months before, he
’
d waited his tum in the offices of three orthopedists, two neurologists, a physiotherapist, a rheumatologist. a radiologist, an osteopath, a vitamin doctor, an acupuncturist, and now the analyst.

The acupuncturist had stuck twelve needles into him on fifteen different occasions, a hundred and eighty needles in all, not one of which had done a thing. Zuckerman sat shirtless in one of the acupuncturist
’
s eight treatment cubicles, the needles hanging from him, and reading
The New York Times
—sat obediently for fifteen minutes, then paid his twenty-five dollars and rode back uptown, jangling with pain each time the cab took a pothole. The vitamin doctor gave him a series of five vitamin B-12 shots. The osteopath yanked his rib cage upward, pulled his arms outward, and cracked his neck sharply to either side. The physiotherapist gave him hot packs, ultrasound, and massage. One orthopedist gave him
“
trigger-point
”
injections and told him to throw out the Olivetti and buy the IBM; the next, having informed Zuckerman that he was an author too, though not of
“
bestsellers,
”
examined him lying down and standing up and bending over, and, after Zuckerman had dressed, ushered him out of his office, announcing to his receptionist that he had no more time that week to waste on hypochondriacs. The third orthopedist prescribed a hot bath for twenty minutes every morning, after which Zuckerman was to perform a series of stretching exercises. The baths were pleasant enough—Zuckerman listened to Mahler through the open doorway—but the exercises, simple as they were, so exacerbated all his pains that within the week he rushed back to the first orthopedist, who gave him a second series of trigger-point injections that did no good. The radiologist X-rayed his chest, back, neck, cranium, shoulders, and arms. The first neurologist who saw the X-rays said he wished his own spine was in such good shape; the second prescribed hospitalization, two weeks of neck traction to alleviate pressure on a cervical disc—if not the worst experience of Zuckerman
’
s life, easily the most humbling. He didn
’
t even want to think about it, and generally there was nothing that happened to him, no matter how bad, that he didn
’
t want to think about. But he was stunned by his cowardice. Even the sedation, far from helping, made the powerlessness that much more frightening and oppressive. He knew he would go berserk from the moment they fastened the weights to the harness holding his head. On the eighth morning, though there was no one in the room to hear him, he began to shout from where he was pinned to the bed,
“
Let me up! Let me go!
”
and within fifteen minutes was back in his clothes and down at the cashier
’
s cage settling his bill. Only when he was safely out onto the street, hailing a cab, did he think,
“
And. What
if something really terrible were happening to you? What then?
”
Jenny had come down from the country to help him through what was to have been the two weeks of traction. She made the round of the galleries and museums in the morning, then after lunch came to the hospital and read to him for two hours from
The Magic Mountain.
It had seemed the appropriate great tome for the occasion, but strapped
inert upon his narrow bed, Zuck
erman grew increasingly irritated by Hans Castorp and the dynamic opportunities for growth provided him by TB. Nor could life in New York Hospital
’
s room 61
I
be said to measure up to the deluxe splendors of a Swiss sanatorium before the First World War, not even at SI ,500 a week.
“
Sounds to me,
”
he told Jenny,
“
like a cross between the Salzburg Seminars and the stately old
Queen Mary.
Five great meals a day and then tedious lectures by European intellectuals, complete with erudite jests. All that philosophy. All that snow. Reminds me of the University of Chicago.
”

He
’
d first met Jenny while visiting the retreat of some friends on a wooded mountainside in a village up the Hudson called Bearsville. The daughter of a local schoolteacher, she
’
d been down to art school at Cooper Union and then three years on her own with a knapsack in Europe, and now. back where she
’
d begun, was living alone in a wood shack with a cat and her paints and a Franklin stove. She was twenty-eight, robust, lonely, blunt, pink-complexioned, with a healthy set of largish white teeth, baby-fine carrot-colored hair, and impressive muscles in her arms. No long temptress fingers like his secretary Diana
—
she had
hands.
“
Someday, if you like,
”
she said to Zuckerman.
“
I
’
ll tell you stories about my jobs—
’
My Biceps and How I Got Them.
’”
Before leaving for Manhattan, he
’
d stopped off at her cabin unannounced, ostensibly to look at her landscapes. Skies. trees, hills, and roads just as blunt as she was. Van Gogh without the vibrating sun. Quotations from Van Gogh
’
s letters to his brother were tacked up beside the easel, and a scarred copy of the French edition of the letters, the one she
’
d lugged around Europe in her knapsack, lay in the pile of art books by the daybed. On the fiberboard walls were pencil drawings: cows, horses, pigs, nests, flowers, vegetables—all announcing with the same forthright charm,
“
Here I am and I am real.
”

They strolled through a ravaged orchard out behind the cabin. sampling the crop of gnarled fruit. Jenny asked him.
“
Why does your hand keep stealing up to your shoulder?
”
Zuckerman hadn
’
t
even realized what he was doing: the pain, at this point, had only cornered about a quarter of his existence, and he still thought of it as something tike a spot on his coat that had only to be brushed away. Yet no matter how hard he brushed, nothing happened.
“
Some sort of strain.
”
he replied.
“
From stiff-arming the critics?
’
^I
she asked.
“
More likely stiff-arming myself. What
’
s it like alone up here?
”
“
A lot of painting, a lot of gardening, a lot of masturbating. It must be nice to have money and buy things. What
’
s the most extravagant thing you
’
ve ever done?
”
The most extravagant, the most foolish, the most vile, the most thrilling
—
he told her, then she told him. Hours of questions and answers, but for a while no further than that.
“
Our great sexless rapport,
”
she called it. when they spoke for long stretches on the phone at night.
“
Tough luck for me, maybe, but I don
’
t want to be one of your girls. I
’
m better off with my hammer, building a new floor.
”
“
How
’
d you learn to build a floor?
”
“
It
’
s easy.
”

One midnight she
’
d called to say she
’
d been out in the garden bringing in the vegetables by moonlight.
“
The natives up here tell me it
’
s going to freeze in a few hours. I
’
m coming down to Lemnos to watch you lick your wounds.
”
“
Lemnos? I don
’
t remember Lemnos.
”
“
Where the Greeks put Phiioctetes and his foot.
”

She
’
d stayed for three days on Lemnos. She squirted the base of his neck with anesthetizing ethyl chloride; she sat unclothed astride his knotted back and massaged between his shoulder blades; she cooked them di
nner, coq au vin and cassoulet—
dishes tasting strongly of bacon—and the vegetables she
’
d harvested before the frost; she told h
i
m about France and her adventures there with men and women. Coming from the bathroom at bedtime, he caught her by the desk looking into his dat
e
book.
“
Oddly furtive,
”
he said,
“
for someone so open.
”
She merely laughed and said,
“
You couldn
’
t write if you didn
’
t do worse. Who
’
s
‘
D
’
? Who
’
s
‘
G
’
? How many do we come to all together?
”
“
Why? Like to meet some of the others?
”
“
No thanks. I don
’
t think I want to get into that. That
’
s what I thought I was phasing myself out of up on my mountaintop.
”
On the last morning of that first visit he wanted to give her something—something other than a book. He
’
d been giving women books (and the lectures that went with them) ail his life. He gave Jenny ten $100 bills.
“
What
’
s this for?
”
she said.
“
You just to
l
d me that you couldn
’
t stand coming down here looking like a yokel. Then there
’
s the curiosity about extravagance
. Van Gogh had his brother, you
have me. Take it.
”
She returned three hours later with a scarlet cashmere cloak, burgundy boots, and a big bottle of
Bal
à
Versailles
.
“
I went to Bergdorf
’
s,
”
she said rather shyly, but proudly
—
“
here
’
s your change,
”
and handed him two quarters, a dime, and three pennies. She took off all her yokel clothes and put on just the cloak and the boots.
“
Know what?
”
she said, looking in the mirror.
“
I feel like I
’
m pretty.
”
“
You
are
pretty.
”
She opened the bottle and dabbed at herself with the stopper: she perfumed the tip of her tongue. Then again to the mirror. A long look.
“
I fe
el
tall.
”
That she wasn
’
t and wouldn
’
t be. She phoned from the country that evening to tell him about her mother
’
s reaction when she stopped by the house, wearing the cloak and smelling of
Ba
l
à
Versailles
, and explained it was a gift from a man.
“
She said,
’
! wonder what your grandmother will say about that coat.
”
“
Well, a harem
’
s a harem, Zuckerman thought.
“
Ask your grandmother
’
s size and I
’
ll get her one too.
”