“Come in!”
Dr. Paul Russel, hands in his pockets, was back to resume our conversation where we had left off.
“Feeling better this morning?”
“Yes, Doctor. Much better.”
“No more fever. The enemy is beaten.”
“A beaten enemy, that’s dangerous,” I remarked. “He’ll only think of vengeance.”
The doctor became more serious. He took out a cigarette and offered it to me. I refused. He lit it for himself.
“Do you still have pain?”
“Yes.”
“It will last a few weeks more. You’re not afraid?”
“Of what?”
“Of suffering.”
“No. I’m not afraid of suffering.”
He looked me straight in the eye. “What are you afraid of, then?”
Again I had the impression that he was keeping something from me. Could he actually know? Had I talked in my sleep, during the operation?
“I’m not afraid of anything,” I answered, staring back at him.
There was a silence.
He went to the window and stayed there a few moments. There, I thought: the back of a man and the river no longer exists. Paradise is when nothing comes between the eye and the tree.
“You have a beautiful view,” he said without turning.
“Very beautiful. The river is like me: it hardly moves.”
“Sheer illusion! It is calm only on the surface. Go beneath the surface, you’ll see how restless it is…” He turned suddenly. “…Just like you, as a matter of fact.”
What does he know exactly? I wondered, somewhat worried. He speaks as if he knows. Is it possible that I betrayed myself?
“Every man is like the river,” I said to shift the conversation toward abstractions. “Rivers flow toward the sea, which is never full. Men are swallowed up by death, which is never satiated.”
He made a gesture of discouragement, as if to say, All right, you don’t want to talk, you’re dodging, it doesn’t matter. I’ll wait.
Slowly he moved toward the door, then stopped.
“I have a message for you. From Kathleen. She’s coming to see you in the late afternoon.”
“You saw her?”
“Yes. She’s been coming every day. She’s an extremely nice girl.”
“Ex-treme-ly.”
He was standing in the opening of the door. His voice seemed very close. The door must have been right next to my bed.
“She loves you,” he said. His voice became hard, insistent. “And you? Do you love her?”
He stressed the “you.” I was breathing faster. What does he know? I asked myself, tormented.
“Of course,” I answered, trying to look calm. “Of course I love her.”
Nothing stirred. There was complete silence. In the hallway, the foggy loudspeaker announced: “Dr. Braunstein, telephone…Dr. Braunstein, telephone…” Echoes from another world. In the room there was utter silence.
“Fine,” Dr. Russel said. “I have to go. I’ll see you tonight, or tomorrow.”
Another boat was gliding by the window. Outside the air was sharp, alive. I thought: at this very moment, men are walking in the streets, without ties, in their shirtsleeves. They are reading, arguing, eating, drinking, stopping to avoid a car, to admire a woman, to look at windows. Outside, at this very moment, men are walking.
Toward the beginning of the afternoon, some of my colleagues showed up. They came together, gay and trying to make me feel equally gay.
They told me some gossip: who was doing what, who was saying what, who was unfaithful to whom. The latest word, the latest indiscretion, the latest story.
Then the conversation came back to the accident.
“You must admit you’ve been lucky: this could have been it,” one of them said.
And another: “Or you could have lost a leg.”
“Or even your mind.”
“You’re going to be rich,” Sandor, a Hungarian, said. “I was hit by a car once myself. I got a thousand dollars from the insurance company. You were lucky it was a cab. Cabs always have a lot of insurance. You’ll be rich, you’ll see, you lucky bastard!”
I hurt everywhere. I couldn’t move. I was practically paralyzed. But I was very lucky. I was going to be rich. I’d be able to travel, go to nightclubs, keep mistresses, be on top of the world: what luck! They just about said they envied me.
“I’d always been told that in America you find dollars in the street,” I said. “So it’s true: you just have to fall down to pick them up.”
They laughed still more and I laughed with them. Once or twice the nurse came in to bring me something to drink and she also laughed with them.
“And you know this morning he didn’t even want to shave!” she told them.
“He’s rich,” Sandor said. “Rich men can afford to be unshaven.”
“You’re funny,” the nurse exclaimed, clapping her hands. “And did he tell you about the mirror?”
“No!” they all shouted together. “Tell us about the mirror!”
She told them that I had refused to look at myself in the mirror that morning.
“Rich men are afraid of mirrors,” I said. “Mirrors have no respect for that which glitters. They’re too familiar with it.”
It was warm in the room, even warmer than in the cast. My friends were perspiring. The nurse was wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. When she left, Sandor winked.
“Not bad, hum?”
“She must be something!” another added.
“Well, you won’t get bored here, you can be sure of that much!”
“No, I won’t get bored,” I said.
We had been together for quite some time, when Sandor remembered that there was a press conference at four.
“That’s true, we’d forgotten.”
They left in a hurry, taking their laughter with them into the hallway, into the street, and finally, where it assumes an historic function, into the United Nations Building.
IT WAS NEARLY SEVEN when Kathleen arrived. She seemed paler than usual, and gayer, also more exuberant. It was as if she were living the happiest moments of her life. What a beautiful view! Look, the river! And such a nice room! So big, so clean! You’re looking great!
It’s weird, I thought. A hospital room is the gayest place on earth. Everybody turns into an actor. Even the patients. You put on new attitudes, new makeup, new joys.
Kathleen kept talking. Even though she didn’t like people who talk without saying anything, she was doing precisely that now. Why is she afraid of silence? I wondered, as I grew more tense. Is it possible she knows something too? She is in a position to know. She was there at the time of the accident. A little ahead. She may have turned around.
I would have liked to steer the conversation to that subject, but I couldn’t stop the flow of her words. She kept talking and talking. Isak is replacing you on the paper. In the office, the phone keeps ringing: all kinds of people asking how you are. And you know, even the one—what’s his name?—you know the one I mean, the fat one, the one who looks pregnant, you know, the one who’s angry at you, even he called. Isak told me. And—
There was a knock on the door. A nurse—a new one, not the morning nurse—brought in my dinner. She was an old woman with glasses, haughtily indifferent. She offered to help me eat.
“Don’t bother,” Kathleen said. “I’ll do it.”
“Very well,” the old nurse said. “As you wish.”
I wasn’t hungry. Kathleen kept insisting: some soup? Yes, yes. You have to. You’ve lost a lot of strength. Come on. Just one spoonful. Just one. One more. Do it for me. And one more. Fine. And now the rest. Let’s see: a piece of meat. Ah! Does that look good!
I closed my eyes and tried not to hear. That was the only way. I suddenly felt like shouting. But I knew I shouldn’t. Anyway what would have been the use?
Kathleen talked on and on.
“…I also retained a la
wyer. A very good one. He’s going to sue the cab company. He’ll be here tomorrow. He is very hopeful. He says you’ll get a lot of money…”
When I was through eating, she took the tray and put it on the table. I could see as she busied herself how tired she was. Now I understood why she was talking so much: she was at the end of her strength. Behind her forced good humor was exhaustion. Seven days. It had been a week since the accident.
“Kathleen?” I called.
“Yes?”
“Come here. Sit down.”
She obeyed and sat on the bed.
“What is it?” she asked worried.
“I want to ask you something.”
She frowned. “Yes?”
“I don’t recognize you. You’ve changed. You talk a lot. Why?”
A shudder went through her eyelids, through her shoulders.
“So many things have happened in a week,” she said blushing slightly. “I want to tell you about them. Everything. Don’t forget that I haven’t talked to you in a week…”
She looked at me as if she had been beaten, and lowered her head. Then slowly, mechanically, she repeated several times in a low, tired, toneless voice, “I don’t want to cry, I don’t want to cry, I don’t want to…”
Poor Kathleen, I thought. Poor Kathleen. I have changed her. Kathleen so proud, Kathleen whose will was stronger than others’, Kathleen whose strength was pure and who was truly tough, Kathleen against whom men with character, strong-minded men, liked to pit themselves; now Kathleen didn’t even have the strength to hold back her tears, her words.
I had transformed her. And she had wanted to change me! “You can’t change a human being,” I had told her in the beginning, once, a thousand times. “You can change someone’s thoughts, someone’s attitudes, someone’s ties. You might even change someone’s desires, but that’s all.” “That’s enough for me,” she had answered.
And the battle had started. She wanted to make me happy no matter what. To make me taste the pleasures of life. To make me forget the past. “Your past is dead. Dead and buried,” she would say. And I would answer, “I am my past. If it’s buried, I’m buried with it.”
She was fighting stubbornly. “I’m strong,” she would say. “I’ll win.” And I would answer, “You are strong. You are beautiful. You have all the qualities to conquer the living. But here you are fighting the dead. You cannot conquer the dead!” “We shall see.”
“I don’t want to cry,” she said, her head down, as if under the weight of all the dead since creation.
I had said human beings don’t change? I was wrong. They do. The dead are all-powerful. That’s what she refused to understand: that the dead are invincible. That through me she was fighting them.
The only child of very rich parents, she was determined and obstinate. Her arrogance was almost naïve. She wasn’t accustomed to losing battles. She thought she could take the place of my fate.
Once I had asked her if she loved me. “No,” she had answered heatedly. And it was true. She hadn’t lied. The truly proud don’t lie.
Our understanding had nothing to do with love. Not at first. Later, yes. But not at the beginning. What united us was exactly what kept us apart. She liked life and love; I only thought of life and love with a strong feeling of shame. We stayed together. She needed to fight and I was watching her. I watched her knocking against the cold, unchanging reality she had discovered first in my words, then in my silence.
We traveled a lot. The days were full, the hours dense. Time was once more an adventure. Whenever Kathleen watched a beautiful dawn, she knew how to make me share her enthusiasm; in the street she was the one to point out beautiful women; at home she taught me that the body is also a source of joy.
At first, at the very beginning, I avoided her kisses. We were living together but our mouths had never met. Something in me shrank from the touch of her lips. It was as if I were afraid that she would become different if I kissed her. Several times she had nearly asked me why, but she had been too proud. Then, little by little, I let myself go. Every kiss reopened an old wound. And I was aware that I was still capable of suffering. That I was still answering the calls of the past.
Our affair lasted a whole year. When we celebrated the first anniversary of our meeting—that’s what we liked to call our affair—we both decided to separate. Since the experiment had foundered, there was no reason to draw it out.
That night neither one of us slept. Stretched out next to each other, frightened, in silence, we waited for daybreak. Just before dawn, she pulled me toward her and in the dark our bodies made love for the last time. An hour later, still silent, I got up, dressed, and left the room without saying good-bye, without even turning around.
Outside, the biting morning wind whipped the houses. The streets were still deserted. Somewhere a door creaked. A window lit up, lonely and pale. It was cold. My legs would have liked me to run. I managed to walk slowly, very slowly: I didn’t want to give in to any weakness. My eyes were crying, probably because of the cold.
“I don’t want to cry,” Kathleen said.
She was shaking her lowered head.
Poor Kathleen, I thought. You too have been changed by the dead.
THE LAWYER came the next day. He wore glasses, was of medium height, and had the self-satisfied air of someone who knows the answer before he has even asked you the question.
He introduced himself: Mark Brown. “Call me Mark.”
He sat down as if he were at home and took a large yellow pad out of his briefcase.
“I talked to your doctors,” he said. “You were in very bad shape. That’s very good.”
“You’re right, that’s very good.”
He understood the irony. “Of course I’m only speaking from the point of view of the lawsuit,” he said, winking at me.
“So am I,” I answered. “I hear you’re going to make me rich.”
“I have high hopes.”
“Be careful. My enemies will never forgive me: I’m about to become a rich journalist!”
He laughed: “For once the law will be on the side of literature!”
He started asking me detailed questions: what exactly had happened on the night of the accident? Had I been alone? No. Who was with me? Kathleen. Yes, the young woman who had called him. Had we quarreled? No. Had we waited for the light to turn green before crossing the street? Yes. The cab had come from the left. Had I seen it approaching?
I took a little more time to answer this last question. Mark took off his glasses and as he wiped them he repeated, “Did you see it approaching?”
“No,” I said.
He looked at me more sharply. “You seem to hesitate.”
“I’m trying to relive the incident, to see it again.”
Mark was intelligent, perceptive. To prepare a good case, he was determined to get lots of details which, on the surface, seemed to have no direct relation to the accident. Before working out his strategy he wanted to know everything. His questioning lasted several hours. He seemed satisfied.
“Not the shadow of a doubt,” he decided. “The driver is guilty of negligence.”
“I hope he won’t have to suffer because of this!” I said. “I wouldn’t want him to be punished. After all he didn’t do it on purpose…”
“Don’t worry,” he reassured me, “he won’t have to pay; it will be the insurance company. We have nothing against him, poor chap.”
“You’re sure, absolutely sure, that nothing will happen to him?”
Poor devil, I thought. It wasn’t his fault. The day before, his wife had called and asked me to forgive him. She was calling on behalf of her husband. He was afraid. He was even afraid to ask me to forgive him.
“Absolutely sure,” the lawyer said with a little, dry laugh. “You’ll be richer and he won’t be any poorer. So, there’s nothing to worry about.”
I couldn’t hide a sigh of relief.
EVERY MORNING Dr. Russel came to chat. He had made it a
habit to end his daily rounds with me. Often he would remain an hour or more. He would walk in without knocking, sit on the windowsill, his hands in the pockets of his white coat, his legs crossed, his eyes reflecting the changing colors of the river.
He spoke a lot about himself, his life in the army—he had been in the Korean War—his work, the pleasures and disappointments that came with it. Each prey torn away from death made him as happy as if he had won a universal victory. A defeat left dark rings under his eyes. I only had to look at him carefully to know whether the night before he had won or lost the battle. He considered death his personal enemy.
“What makes me despair,” he often told me bitterly, “is that our weapons aren’t equal. My victories can only be temporary. My defeats are final. Always.”
One morning he seemed happier than usual. He gave up his favorite spot near the window and started walking up and down the room like a drunkard, talking to himself.
“You have been drinking, Doctor!” I teased him.
“Drinking!” he exclaimed. “Of course I haven’t been drinking. I don’t drink. Today I’m simply happy. Awfully happy. I won! Yes, this time I won…”
His victory tasted like wine. He couldn’t stand still. To split up his happiness he would have liked to be simultaneously himself and someone else: witness and hero. He wanted to sing and to hear himself singing, to dance and to see himself dancing, to climb to the top of the highest mountain and to shout, to scream with all his strength, “I won! I conquered Death!”
The operation had been difficult, dangerous: a little twelve-year-old boy who had a very slim chance of surviving. Three doctors had given up hope. But he, Paul Russel, had decided to try the impossible.
“The kid will make it!” he thundered, his face glowing as if lit up by a sun inside him. “Do you understand? He’s going to live! And yet all seemed lost! The infection had reached his leg and was poisoning his blood. I amputated the leg. The others were saying that it wouldn’t do any good. That it was too late. That the game was lost. But I didn’t hesitate. I started to act. For each breath, I had to fight with every weapon I had. But you see: I won! This time I really won!”
The joy of saving a human life, I thought. I have never experienced it. I didn’t even know that it existed. To hold in your hands a boy’s life is to take God’s place. I had never dreamt of rising above the level of man. Man is not defined by what denies him, but by that which affirms him. This is found within, not across from him or next to him.