Wonderland (20 page)

He spoke excitedly. He took off his glasses so that Jesse could stare into the perfect gray-green irises of his eyes, the peaceful, wheel-like circles of his eyes, and see Fate itself.

Jesse answered as if hypnotized. “Yes, I understand.”

“It is easy to die, Jesse. I see it every day—the bodies that surrender, die. The most expensive bodies surrender and die. They claim that they want to live, but really they want to die, because the mystery of their bodies is too exhausting for them. They die, they surrender. It is easy to die. But not to live: that is not easy, that is the challenge, the strain. To displace God is not easy. To be higher, a higher man, that is not an easy fate. And I believe you will share this fate with me, Jesse. I am certain of it. Once you become the man you are, Jesse, you cannot
ever rest, but must prove yourself continually. Again and again. It is the fate of the higher man.”

Ruddy with the joy of such good news, he rolled up the blueprint and put a rubber band around it.

He took Jesse into his inner office, his private office. “My special office where I commune with myself,” he said. Every time he showed Jesse this small, dark room it was a surprise: a single black leather chair, built especially for Dr. Pedersen’s large, heavy frame; a single lamp; no books; not even a carpet on the floor; windows with dark green shades that were partway drawn; a sacred silence.

“Like this,” he said. He went to sit in the chair, easing his bulk down slowly, with a peculiar grace for so heavy a man. “I sit alone. I am alone.” He closed his eyes. “No one is near me. Here is where I solve mysteries that are not understood, even by me. They go against laboratory tests. All right, yes, laboratory tests are not always accurate. The organism changes, suffers, grows, shivers, its secretions change, its heartbeat goes wild, its lungs fill up—all right—but still it is a mystery to me, how I can outguess these tests, and I am humble in the face of my own gift. I am passive, sitting here. At such times I am close to God, very close. My thoughts arrange themselves—the symptoms, the clues that bodies of sick strangers are giving to me, the data other physicians cannot interpret, and the whispering souls of the sick themselves—yes, sometimes I feel their souls in this room with me, brushing against me like bats in the dark! And then, as if God had sent an angel to whisper in my ear, somehow the truth comes to me. It comes into my waking mind and I understand. Yesterday I knew, I understood, that a woman was dying of a simple deficiency disease, though no one could figure out what was wrong with her; I
knew
, I saved her.… But I take no claim for my gift. I am only to sink into my deepest self until the truth comes to me; it is Fate operating in me and not myself.”

On Monday mornings Jesse was sometimes allowed to miss school and to attend Dr. Pedersen’s rounds at the local hospital. Dr. Pedersen was merry and sociable in his hospital whites, an enormous billowing outfit that made him look larger than ever, and very chaste and earnest. Jesse was proud of accompanying him; his father (though he could never quite bring himself to think of him as “father”) was extremely popular, known by everyone on the staff, by the nurses, by stray patients in the corridors and those sitting up in bed, waiting for him.
“Dr. Pedersen!” they would cry, waving, and he would go to shake hands, knowing everyone by name. Jesse stood proudly at his elbow.

“And this is my son Jesse, who is very interested in medicine.”

As Dr. Pedersen went on his rounds he was joined by one person after another—a young physician on the staff, a nurse who was an old friend, even the Chief of Surgery himself, a Dr. Gallimard who was very courteous and very friendly, though Jesse thought him a little odd. He was so
curious
about Dr. Pedersen and his patients! Dr. Pedersen would chat with patient after patient, never hurrying, hardly needing to glance at the patient’s chart, knowing present ailments and past ailments and the names of the patient’s family, the patient’s work, where he lived, where he was from, everything. He smiled heartily, told jokes. Occasionally his face shifted and Jesse saw in it that expression of sternness, as if he were remembering precise material, scanning paragraphs in his head. He never forgot anything. His sickest patients grew ruddy in his presence, as if rich fluids were pumped into their veins.

One day a nurse was having difficulty with an old woman, not one of Dr. Pedersen’s patients, and she asked him for help. The woman was wiry and gray, her face sexless, tense with maniacal energy; she had thrown herself around in bed and dislodged a tube that was feeding blood into her arm. When Dr. Pedersen came into her room she was yelling. Jesse, out in the hall, could make no sense of her screams; he felt shaky himself, almost nauseated. Dr. Pedersen went right to the woman, bent over her, began speaking in a slow, gentle, courteous voice. “Mrs. Lowe, may I introduce myself, I am Dr. Pedersen.…” The woman screamed and threw herself from side to side. “I am Dr. Pedersen and I must find a way of helping you, my dear, you are going to do yourself some injury … you should lie still, my dear, lie still.…” He took a needle and seemed to be showing it to her. She stared at him. Jesse thought he could see, in her widened eyes, a look of absolute terror. But she lay still, she seemed to be listening to Dr. Pedersen. “Let me examine this arm,” Dr. Pedersen said, and he scanned the woman’s thin arm, looking for a vein. “This will only take a minute and it must be done, my dear, you know that.… You must allow us to help you. It will hurt a little, yes, but the needle is very small … it’s very clean.… We must feed you, my dear, nourish you.…” He examined the other arm, testing her veins with his thumb; he tried an experimental prick
with the needle and the woman drew back only slightly. He gave up on her arms and began on her legs. Something drew Jesse to the doorway; he must look; his instincts were to turn away from the sight of the old woman’s white, blue-veined, splotched legs, her agitated face, her odor of sickness, and yet something else drew him, forced him forward, inward, to watch Dr. Pedersen, as if this were a scene he must memorize.

In went the needle. Testing, probing. “You are very patient with me,” Dr. Pedersen said. His large white back was to Jesse. It was enormous, broad with the strain of concentration. If there were other people around—nurses, a young doctor—Jesse did not really notice them. He watched Dr. Pedersen. He listened to that voice. “The next one should do it, I am suddenly certain,” Dr. Pedersen said lightly, and indeed he did find a vein, in the woman’s cadaverous ankle. “Ah, here. Thank you, my dear. Thank you for your enormous patience. Now we are all set, now we will take care of you as we should.… I hope that didn’t hurt …?”

The woman lay back on her pillow, her eyes heavy, lined, exhausted. She shook her head slowly. Dr. Pedersen remained to chat with her and she managed to speak to him, to say something that sounded like a name, her own name. Jesse felt a little faint. He went to get a drink of water at a fountain in the hall. He felt faint, yet very excited. Yes, yes! He had witnessed something wonderful!

Dr. Pedersen always ended up in the staff lounge, sipping coffee, with a small crowd of people around him. He talked about strange new cases: “The patient was originally admitted to a hospital in Potsdam with a headache, a fever of a hundred and four, complaints of pains in the neck, pain in cheeks, cheekbones, eyes, ears. She could hardly move her head by the time I saw her. She was twenty-nine years old, no previous illnesses except measles and mumps, no previous hospitalizations. The LP was clear, absolutely clear!—and yet it looked as if she was going downhill fast; she was tense, nervous, half out of her mind—her lungs began filling up with fluid, she was in heart failure, and spasms began up and down her body—tiny pinpoint hemorrhages on her arms and legs and in her eyes—she was dying right in front of everyone—and—”

But a paging over the loudspeaker interrupted this: “Dr. Pedersen,
Dr. Pedersen—” and off he went to the telephone, with his listeners gaping after him.

But he was at his best when giving guest sermons at the Lutheran Church, handsome and fresh-faced in a new gray suit with a vest, his hair perfectly combed across his large head, his glasses glinting angelically, his forefinger raised to the congregation as he pointed out certain truths: “The scientist is not at war with the man of God. No. It is an idle mind that suggests such nonsense. I present myself as a man of science and also a man of God. Truth is to be honored wherever it is found, absolute truth; it is only truth that matters. The destiny of man is to claim new territory, to pursue the infinite, to create maps and boundaries and lines of latitude and longitude with which to explain reality—the terrible darknesses and odors of reality, the terrible silence of the universe that does not know our human language. America is blessed by God. America is all men, all humanity, blessed by God and pushing outward, always outward, as we yearn for another world, we yearn to be assimilated into God as into a higher protoplasmic essence.… Though many of us here today are frightened of the future, I think we should know that the United States is a unique, blessed, powerful nation, and that it cannot be conquered, not in our lifetimes or in our children’s lifetimes.… There is something magical about the United States. This is a time of magic.…”

Jesse sat in the midst of the congregation, staring at Dr. Pedersen. Beside him Mrs. Pedersen fussed nervously with a handkerchief. He could not tell if she was self-conscious or restless; Hilda on the other side of him, sat with her gloved hands folded and stared up at her father just as Jesse did, listening intently. The church was well attended at this eleven o’clock service. Its off-white interior, dingy with a look of disuse, seemed to fall back before the passion of Dr. Pedersen’s voice. Everything took heart, took on color—the faded grape padding of the pews, the dull wood, the stained-glass windows that looked out upon an overcast November day, invisible from here. Dr. Pedersen’s magic hung in the air, almost scented. The man himself, poised over the pulpit with the occult grace of the very fat, smiled out upon the Sunday faces with a look of vast, benevolent wisdom.

This is a time of magic
.…

Then the Reverend Wieden led everyone in prayer, and Jesse’s
mind skidded from idea to idea, from image to image, excited by what he had heard. It was as if Dr. Pedersen had ascended to the pulpit to speak to him, only to him.… He carried his father’s words inside him, sacred words hoarded in a part of his mind, and not even the commotion of the organ and the singing could dislodge them. On the way home he sat in the back seat of the car with Hilda, and Dr. Pedersen and his wife sat in front—Frederich, who would be upset too much by the church’s attempt at music and by its musty congested air, never went to church—and still his father’s words echoed in his head, though Dr. Pedersen might now be chatting about other, ordinary things. Jesse stared out the window at the sidewalks of Lockport and saw how they were transformed, transfigured, by the magical air of Sunday. In the corner of his eye he caught sight of children on the street, stray anonymous children, skinny boys in canvas jackets with nothing to do, their hands stuffed in their pockets, staring at Dr. Pedersen’s immense black car as it sped up Washburn Street.…

Jesse’s first Christmas in the Pedersen home was a confusion of delights—the great evergreen tree that filled the foyer, decorated with hundreds of gleaming ornaments, some of them fragile as eggshells, puffs of silken angels’ hair, with a plump feathery female angel at its highest point, piles of brightly wrapped presents, baskets of food and flowers, wreaths of evergreen that smelled of vast snowy fields and bunches of ivy and holly and tiny red berries, poinsettia plants in heavy pots wrapped with green tinfoil and red satin ribbons. Lights that made Jesse’s eyes water glimmered everywhere. He seemed to float with the light, with the music of Christmas; his feet seemed springy on the floor. He had never understood Christmas before. The house was filled with the smells of Christmas food—roasting turkeys, roasting ham, baking pies, Christmas cookies, Christmas candy. Christmas dinner itself lasted for many hours. Dr. Pedersen began it with a long, happy, conversational prayer of thanks. The dining room table had been opened as far as it would go, extra leaves put in, so that all the Pedersen relatives could be with them; Jesse sat between his sister Hilda and his grandfather, Grandpa Shirer. There was so much for everyone to talk about! Everyone was excited, buoyant as weights bobbing in restless water, with no fear of ever sinking. What force could sink the Pedersens?

Many friends of the Pedersens came over during the day. Jesse
stayed near Mrs. Pedersen, shy of so many strangers, and she kept pushing him forward, introducing him, pouring champagne for him so that he could join in the numerous toasts.… He felt giddy, intoxicated. He had never understood Christmas before. “A toast to Dr. Pedersen, the Citizen of the Year!” cried someone—and it turned out, Mrs. Pedersen told him, to be the Mayor of Lockport himself, an old friend of Dr. Pedersen’s. In the early evening Dr. Pedersen had a large pen-and-ink drawing put up on an easel, and he and Mr. Erikson, the architect who had drawn it, explained to the group how the Pedersen Clinic would expand and how, one day, an entire medical village would surround it. “And, my friends,” Dr. Pedersen said with a rowdy wag of his finger, “the city of Lockport will expand with it, believe me! The value of your property will rise! I dislike prophets, because they are usually shabby melodramatists, but I would like to prophesy that by the year 1975 our city will be famous, world-famous, as a center for the diagnosis and cure of hundreds of diseases by long distance, by computer—by a system of memory-core devices that, upon being fed the symptoms of a patient as far away as Brazil, will diagnose both disorder and method of treatment in a matter of seconds. What, you look incredulous! Even my dear wife looks disbelieving! But we’ll see—yes, we’ll see who is right, who knows how to read the future! How can you be so certain that what I say is outlandish? Yes, I may be a little giddy tonight, I may have drunk more champagne than I should, but how do you know that I don’t stand at the very center of the known world, I, Karl Pedersen himself? Eh? Are you all so very certain of the identity of the ground you stand upon?”