The Anatomy Lesson (33 page)

The last of the old-fashioned fathers. And we, thought Zuckerman. the last of the old-fashioned sons. Who that follows after us will understand how midway through the twentieth century, in this huge, lax, disjointed democracy, a father—and not even a father of learning or eminence or demonstrable power—could still assume the stature of a father in a Kafka story? No, the good old days are just about over, when half the time, without even knowing it, a father could sentence a son to punishment for his crimes and the love and hatred of authority could be such a painful, tangled mess.

There was a letter from the student paper.
The Maroon.
The editors wanted to interview him about the future of his kind of fiction in the post-modernist era of John Barth and Thomas Pynchon. Since they understood that because of his surgery he might not wish to be seen, would he please answer, at whatever length he chose, the ten questions on the sheet attached.

Well, they were kind not to show up and just grill him on the spot; he didn
’
t feel ready quite yet for the social pleasures of an author
’
s life.

1. Why do you continue to write? 2. What purpose does your work serve? 3. Do you feel yourself part of a rearguard action, in the service of a declining tradition? 4. Has your sense of vocation altered significantly because of the events of the last decade?

Yes, yes, said Zuckerman, very much so, and dropped back below the gum line.

The fourth morning he got up and looked in the mirror. Until then he hadn
’
t been interested. Very pale, very drawn. Surgical tape under his chin. Hollow cheeks that a movie star would envy, and around the surgical tape a scraggly growth of beard that had come in all white. And balder. Four days in Chicago had undone four months of trichotogical treatment. The swelling had subsided, but the jaw was alarmingly lopsided and even through the whiskers looked badly bruised. Mulberry, like a birthmark. His cracked and spotted lips had also turned colors. And two teeth were indeed gone. He realized that his glasses were gone. Under the snow in the cemetery, buried till spring with Bobby
’
s mother. All the better: for now he didn
’
t care to see clearly the clever jokes that mockery plays. He
’
d been considered a great mocker once himself, but never as diabolically inspired as this. Even without the aid of his glasses, he understood that he didn
’
t look like he was on the ball. He thought. Just don
’
t make me write about it after. Not everything has to be a book. Not that, too.

But back in bed he thought. The burden isn
’
t that everything has to be a book. It
’
s that everything
can
be a book. And doesn
’
t count as life until it is.

Then the euphoria of convalescence—and the loosening of his rubber bands. During the weeks that followed the successful operation, in the excitement of giving up each day a little more of the narcotic support, full of the pleasure of learning for the second time in forty years to form simple monosyllabic English with his lips and his palate and his tongue and his teeth, he wandered the hospital in his robe and slippers and the new white beard. Nothing he pronounced, in his weakened voice, felt time-worn—all the words seemed rapturously clean, and the oral catastrophe behind him. He tried to forget all that had happened in the limousine, at the cemetery, on the plane; he tried to forget everything that had happened since he
’
d come out to go to school here the first time.
I
was s
ixteen
, intoning
“
…
shantih, shantih, shantih
”
on the El. That
’
s the last I remember.

The first-year interns, young men in their mid-twenties, mustaches newly cultivated and eyes darkly circled from working days and nights, came around to his room after supper to introduce themselves and chat. They struck him as artless, innocent children. It was as though, leaving the platform with their medical-school diplomas, they
’
d taken a wrong turn and fallen back headlong into the second grade. They brought their copies of
Carnovsky
for him to autogra
ph and solemnly asked if he was
working on a new book. What Zuckerman wanted to know was the age of the oldest member of their medical-school class.

He began helping the post-operative patients just up out of bed, slowly wheeling along the corridor the poles slung with their IV bags.
‘
Twelve times around,
”
moaned a forlorn man of sixty with a freshly bandaged head; dark pigmented moles could be seen at the base of his spine where the ties to his gown had come undone.
“
… twelve times around the floor.
”
he told Zuckerman,
“
… supposed to be a mile.
”
“
Well,
”
said Zuckerman. through a rigid jaw,
“
you don
’
t have to do the mile today.
”
“
I own a seafood restaurant. You like fish?
”
“
Love it.
”
“
You
’
ll come when you
’
re better. Al
’
s Dock,
‘
Where lobsters are the Maine thing.
’
Spelled M-a-i-n-e. You
’
ll have dinner on me. Everything fresh that day. One thing I learned. You can
’
t serve frozen fish. There are people who can tell the difference and you can
’
t get away with it. You have got to serve fresh fish. The only thing we have that
’
s frozen is the shrimp. What do you do?
”
Oh, God—should I now do my number? No, no. in their weakened condition too alarming for both of them. Donning that mask wasn
’
t a joke: all the while he was enjoying it, his exuberant performance was making even more unrelenting all the ghosts and the rages. What looked like a new obsession to exorcise the old obsessions was only the old obsessions merrily driving him as far as he could go. As far? Don
’
t bet on it. Plenty more turmoil where that came from.
“
Out of work,
”
said Zuckerman.
“
A bright young guy like you?
”
Zuckerman shrugged.
“
Temporary setback, that
’
s all.
’’
“
Well, you ought to
learn
the seafood business.
”
“
Could be,
”
said Zuckerman.
“
You
’
re young—
”
and with those words, the restaurateur was choking back tears, suddenly fighting down the convalescent
’
s pity for alt vulnerable things, including himself now and his bandaged head.
“
I can
’
t tell you what it was like,
”
he said.
“
Close to death. You can
’
t understand. How it draws you to life. You survive,
”
he said,
“
and you see it all new.
everything,
”
and six days later he had a hemorrhage and died.

The sobbing of a woman, and Zuckerman was transfixed outside her room. He was wondering what, if anything, he should do—
What is the matter? What does she need?
—when a nurse popped out and rushed right past him, muttering only half to herself,
“
Some people think you
’
re going to torture them.
”
Zuckerman peered inside. He saw the graying hair spread across her pillow, and a paperback copy of
David Copperfield
open on the
sheet that covered her chest, She was about his age and wearing a pale blue nightgown of her own; the delicate shoulder straps looked absurdly fetching. She might have been lying down to rest for a moment before rushing off to a dinner party on a summer evening.
“
Is there anything—
’
?
”
“
This cannot be!
”
she shouted. He came farther into the room.
“
What is it?
”
he whispered.
“
They
’
re removing my larynx,
”
she cried—
”
go away!
”

In the lounge at the end of the ear, nose, and throat floor he checked the relatives of the surgical patients waiting for the results. He sat and waited with them. Always somebody at the card table playing solitaire. All there was to worry about, yet not one forgot to give the deck a good shuffle before dealing a new game. One afternoon Walsh, his emergency-room doctor, found him there in the lounge, on his lap a yellow pad where he
’
d been able to write nothing more than
“
Dear Jenny.
”
Dear Diana. Dear Jaga, Dear Gloria. Mostly he sat crossing out words that were wrong in every possible way:
overwrought… self-contempt.
. .
weary of treatment… the mania of sickness… the reign of error
…
hypersensitized to a
ll
the inescapable limits… engrossed to the exclusion of everything else..
. Nothing would flow with any reality—a mannered, stilted letter-voice, aping tones of great sincerity and expressing, if anything, his great reservations about writing to explain at all. He couldn
’
t be intelligent about having failed to make good as a man on his back, and he could not be apologetic or ashamed. Wasn
’
t emotionally persuasive any longer. Yet as soon as he sa
t
down to write, out came another explanation, causing him to recoil from his words in disgust. The same with the books: however ingenious and elaborate the disguise, answering charges, countering allegations, angrily sharpening the conflict while earnestly striving to be understood. The endless public deposition—what a curse! The best reason of all never to write again.

While they rode the down elevator, Walsh savored the last of his cigarette—savoring, Zuckerman thought, some contempt for me too.

“
Who set your jaw finally?
”
Walsh asked.

Zuckerman told him.

“
Nothing but the best.
”
said Walsh.
“
Know how he rose to the white-haired heights? Studied years ago with the big guy in France, Experimented on monkeys. Wrote it all up. Bashed in their faces with a baseball bat and then studied the fracture lines.
”

To then write it up? Even more barbaric than what went on in his line,
“
Is that true?
”

“
Is that how you get to the heights? Don
’
t ask me. Gordon Walsh never got to do much bashing. How about the five-dollar habit. Mr. Zucke
rman? Remove you from your Perco
dan yet?
”

Because of his habit Zuckerman was handed a drink twice a day looking and tasting like a cherry soda—his
“
pain cocktail
”
they called it. It was delivered routinely—early morning, late afternoon—by the nurse who put the addict through his paces. Taken at fixed times and not in response to the pain, the drink furnished the opportunity to
“
relea
rn
”
facing his
“
problem.
”
“
Give us this day,
”
she said,
“
our daily fix,
”
while obedient Zuckerman emptied the glass.
“
Not taking anything on the sly, are we, Mr. Z.?
”
Though for the first several days off the p
ill
s and the vodka he
’
d been feeling unpleasantly jittery and nervous—at moments shaky enough to wonder who he could find in the hospital to help him break Bobby
’
s rules—the answer was no.
“
Nothing surreptitious about Mr. Z..
”
he assured her.
“
That
’
s the boy,
”
she said, and with a conspiratorial hospital wink ended the pseudo-seductive little game. The changing proportion of active ingredients to cherry syrup was known only to the staff; the cocktail was the centerpiece of Bobby
’
s deconditioning plan, a gradual fading process to reduce Zuckerman
’
s medication to zero over a period of six weeks. The idea was to phase Zuckerman out of physiological dependence on pain-killers as well as the
“
pain behavior syndrome.
”

As for the investigation into the pain so conducive to the behavior, it had yet to be ordered. Bobby didn
’
t want Zuckerman, whose morale after a year and a half required a certain tactful treatment of its own, to drop into a state of confused depression because of too many fingers of too many doctors poking around to see what was wrong. Zuckerman
’
s energy was to be engaged for now in overcoming the long-standing addiction to the drugs and the strength-sapping trauma to the face, especially as the occlusion of the jaw wasn
’
t exactly as it should be and there were two front teeth still to come.

“
So far so good,
”
reported Zuckerman on the subject of his habit.

“
Well,
”
Walsh replied,
“
we
’
ll see when you
’
re out from under surveillance. No armed robber breaks into a bank while still a guest of the state. That happens the week he gets sprung.
”