The Anatomy Lesson (23 page)

The tears he suppressed, but he couldn
’
t stop talking. Aside from the Percodan buoying him up, there was the decisive landmark decision made only the minute before—to have no pain even when he had it, to treat it like pleasure instead. He didn
’
t mean masochistic pleasure either. It was bunk, at least in his case, that the payoff for being in pain was morbid secret gratifications. Everybody wants to
make pain interesting—first the
religions, then the poets, then, not to be left behind, even the doctors getting in on the act with their psychosomatic obsession. They want to give it
significance.
What does it mean? What are you hiding? What are you showing? What are you betraying? It
’
s impossible just to suffer the pain, you have to suffer its meaning. But it
’
s not interesting and it has no meaning—it
’
s just plain stupid pain, it
’
s the
opposite
of interesting, and nothing,
nothing
made it worth it unless you were mad to begin with, Nothing made it worth the doctor
’
s offices and the hospitals and the drugstores and the clinics and the contradictory diagnoses. Nothing made it worth the depression and the humiliation and the helplessness, being robbed of work and walks and exercise and every last shred of independence. Nothing made it worth not being able to make your own bed in the morning without crawling back in immediately afterwards, nothing, not even a harem of a hundred in only their garter belts cooking rice pudding all at the same time. Nobody could make him believe that he
’
d had this pain for a year and a half because he believed he deserved it. What made him so resentful was that he didn
’
t. He wasn
’
t relieving guilt feelings—he didn
’
t
have
guilt feelings. If he agreed with the Appels and their admonitions, he wouldn
’
t have written those books in the first place. He wouldn
’
t have been able to. He wouldn
’
t have wanted to. Sure he was weary of the fight, but it didn
’
t follow that his illness represented capitulation to their verdict. It wasn
’
t punishment or guilt that he was expiating. He had not been four years to this great university having rational humanism drummed into his skull in order to wind up expiating irrational guilt through organic pain. He hadn
’
t been writing for twenty years, writing principally
about
irrational guilt, to wind up irrationally guilty. Nor was he in need of a sickness to gain attention. Losing attention was what he was after—masked and gowned in the operating room,
that
was objective. He did not wish to be a suffering person for any banal, romantic, ingenious, poetical, theological, or psychoanalytical reason, and certainly not to satisfy Mortimer Horowitz. Mortimer Horowitz was the best reason in the world to stay well. There was nothing in it and he wouldn
’
t do it. He refused.

Three (or four) Percodan. two-thirds of a gram of marijuana, six ounces of vodka, and he saw everything clearly and couldn
’
t stop talking. It was over. The eighteen months were over. He
’
d made up his mind and that was that.
I
am well
.

“
I can
’
t get over it. I was the gr
eat performer, glib and satiric
and worldly, and you were this earnest, dutiful, asthmatic kid helping his father in the handbag shop. I saw your name in the catalogue and I thought,
‘
So that
’
s where Bobby
’
s found to hide. Behind the surgeon.
’
But what I see is somebody hiding from nothing. Somebody who knows when he
’
s right and knows when he
’
s wrong. Somebody who doesn
’
t have time in the operating room to sit around wondering what to do next and whether it
’
ll work or not. Somebody who knows
how
to be right—how to be right
quickly.
No errors allowed. The stakes never in doubt. Life vs. Death. Health vs. Disease. Anesthesia vs. Pain. What that must do for a man!
”

Bobby leaned back and laughed. Big hearty laugh, no oxygen shortage in those lungs anymore. He
’
s the size of Falstaff. And not from booze but from this usefulness. He
’
s the size of his worth.

“
When you know how to do it, Zuck, it
’
s very easy. It
’
s like riding a bike.
”

“
No, no, people tend to devalue the sophistication of their own special field. It
’
s easy only because of all you know.
”

“
Speaking of specialties, in
Time
they say you
’
ve had four wives.
”

“
In life only three. And you?
”

“
One. One wife,
”
said Bobby,
“
one child, one divorce.
”

“
How
’
s your father?
”

“
Not so good. My mom just died. Forty-five years of marriage. He
’
s in a bad way. In the best of times he
’
s not your most unemotional Jew—he can
’
t even tell you it
’
s Wednesday without tears coming to his eyes. So it
’
s pretty rough right now. He
’
s staying at my place for the time being. And your folks?
”

“
My father died in
‘
69. Half out of it with a stroke, and then a coronary. My mother went a year later. Brain tumor. Very sudden.
”

“
So you
’
re orphaned. And right now no wife. Is that the problem? Abandonment?
”

“
I
’
ve got some girls looking after me.
”

“
What drug you on, Zuck?
”

“
None, nothing. Just beat, that
’
s all. The wives, the books, the girls, the funerals. The death of my folks was strong medicine. I
’
d been rehearsing it for years in my fiction, but I still never got the idea. But mostly I
’
m dead tired of the job. It
’
s not the elevating experience they pro
mised in Humanities 3. Starving
myself of experience and eating only words. It brought out the drudge in me. Bob, this ritual that it takes to write. It may look to outsiders like the life of freedom—not on a schedule, in command of yourself, singled out for glory, the choice apparently to write about anything. But once one
’
s writing, it
’
s
alt
limits. Bound to a subject. Bound to make sense of it. Bound to make a book of it. If you want to be reminded of your limitations virtually every minute, there
’
s no better occupation to choose. Your memory, your diction, your intelligence, your sympathies, your observations, your sensations, your understanding—never enough. You can find out more about what
’
s missing in you than you really ought to know. All of you an enclosure you keep trying to break out of. And all the obligations more ferocious for being self-imposed.
”

“
Every construction that helps anybody is also a boundary, I hate to tell you, but that
’
s true even in medicine. Everybody
’
s trapped in the thing he does best.
”

“
Look, it
’
s simple: I
’
m sick of raiding my memory and feeding on the past. There
’
s nothing mo
r
e to see from my angle: if it ever was the thing I did best, it isn
’
t anymore. I want an active connection to life and I want it now.
I
want an active connection to
myself.
I
’
m sick of channeling everything into writing. I want the real thing, the thing
in the raw,
and not for the writing but for itself. Too long living out of the suitcase of myself. I want to start again fo
r ten hundred different reasons.
”

But Bobby shook his bearded head: didn
’
t get it, wouldn
’
t buy it.
“
If you were a penniless failure as a writer, and nothing you wrote got published, and nobody knew your name, and if you were going into social work, say, which only took two years more of study, well, okay. If during all these years as the writer you are you
’
d been hanging around hospitals and doctors, if for the last twenty years you
’
d been reading medical books and the medical journals on the side—but as you say yourself, you
’
re just as stupid about science as you were in 1950. If you really had been living some kind of secret life all these years—but have you? When did you get this great idea?
”

‘
Two, three months ago.
”

“
I think you
’
ve got another problem.
”

“
What
’
s that?
”

“
I don
’
t know. Maybe you
are
just tired. Maybe you want to hang a sign on your door,
‘
Gone fishin,
”
and take off to Tahiti for a year. Maybe you just need your second wind as a writer.
You tell me. Maybe you
’
ve got to get screwed more or something.
”

“
No help. Tried it. All the outward trappings of pleasure, but the result is the inverse of pleasure. Getting screwed, climbing Mount Everest, writing books—not enough companionship. Mailer ran for Mayor of New York. Kafka talked about becoming a waiter in a Te
l
Aviv cafe.
I
want to be a doctor. The dream of breaking out isn
’
t that rare. It happens to the most hardened writers. The work draws on you and draws on you and you begin to wonder how much of you there is to draw on. Some turn to the bottle, others the shotgun. I prefer medical school.
”

“
Except, whatever problems are plaguing you in writing, they
’
re going to be right there, you know, when you
’
re a doctor. You can grow sick and tired of the real thing too. Tired of the cancers, tired of the strokes, tired of the families taking the bad news. You can get just as tired of malignant tumors as you can of anything e
l
se. Look, I
’
ve had experience right up to here, and it doesn
’
t pay off as greatly as you might think. You can get so involved in experience, you lose the opportunity to grasp what you
’
re going through. You pay your money, Zuck. and you take your choice. I happen to think you
’
re going to be Zuckerman the doctor just the way you
’
re Zuckerman the writer, no different.
”

“
But the isolation won
’
t be there, the solitude won
’
t be there
—
it
can
’
t
be there. The physical differences are too great. There are a thousand people walking around this hospital. Know who walks around my study, who I palpate and tell to say
‘
Ahhh
’
? Writing is not a very sociable business.
”

“
I
don
’
t agree with that. Your solitude is of your own making. Working with people is obviously alien to your nature. Your temperament
’
s your temperament, and it
’
ll still be yourself you
’
re telling to say
‘
Ahhh.
’
”

“
Bob. remember me out here? You don
’
t remember an isolate, damn it. I was a lively, gregarious, outgoing kid. Laughing. Self-confident. I was practically crazy with intellectual excitement. Your old pal Zuck was not a remote personality.
I
was somebody burning to begin.
”

“
And now you
’
re burning to end. That
’
s the impression I get anyway, underneath what you say.
”

“
No, no, no—burning to begin
again.
Look, I want to take a crack at mod school. What the hell is so wrong with that
’
.
’”